


Dramatic Irony

by SingularMe



Category: Persona 3
Genre: Alternate Canon, Angst, Death, Drugs, F/M, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Mental Health Issues, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Persona 3 Portable, Romance, Spoilers, Violence, no beta we just die
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-13
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-10 16:54:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 54,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28040463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SingularMe/pseuds/SingularMe
Summary: Par for the course of being Shinjiro Aragaki was threading the line of existential nihilism but he was a far cry from apathy, all of him tough skin but soft heart. Too fed up to live yet too scared to die Shinjiro carried his weight and was glad to just exist and yet – and yet – when a girl with crimson eyes told him his time was nigh he didn’t react outrageously and instead asked how she knew.She told him she could read the context clues, see the death flags. “It’s ok, I have them too.”It made sense that she’d be the only one that could remove them as well.
Relationships: Aragaki Shinjiro/Female Persona 3 Protagonist
Comments: 14
Kudos: 18





	1. The Year Before

**Author's Note:**

> The story takes place alongside the events of the game from Shinjiro’s point of view, but with the FeMC and Shinji having met as far as her first night in Iwatodai. You could say it’s slightly AU, not just because of the setting but because I have to define the FeMC’s traits. It’s a bit of a slow burn, with moments where Shinjiro has to figure things on his own (though their relationship and the way they impact each other is the main focus).
> 
> TRIGGER WARNING for themes of drug abuse and suicidal tendencies, lots of violence and some instances of light gore. Other than that I’ve also rated the story M for mentions of sex, though never explicit.
> 
> At the time of me writing this the only apparent Atlus approved NAME for the FeMC has been Kotone Shiomi. All her names are real pretty, but to try and avoid confusion I’m sticking to this one.
> 
> As for this FIRST CHAPTER/PROLOGUE – it’s a bit bloated and on the longer side because I needed to set a mood and dispersing it throughout more chapters would only slow plot progression. It’s a bit of a downer, definitely the heaviest of the chapters I’ve written so far – I promise it gets better! It takes place before the events of the game, so if you feel inclined to skip to the actual first chapter I’d recommend at least reading the LAST PART, right after the last divider (the “-“ in the middle of the page). But, of course, I’d like it if you read the whole thing and shared your opinion ^.^
> 
> Enjoy!

9/ 27/ 2008 • Sa, Night

The pointers on his watch read 11h23 p.m. but he suspected it to be at least 5 minutes short of the actual time. This wouldn’t do, but there was no way to be sure, so he committed himself to be extra vigilant nearing the arrival of the Dark Hour.

He angrily shut the watch’s cover and stuffed into his jeans, clasping its chain to his belt. Castor’s grumbling but coherent nonsense had woken him up from a small nap not too long ago and made it impossible for him to slip in a few minutes of sleep before midnight. Like many a times before, Shinjiro conjectured over how, throughout his life of dubious amount of resources and free time, did he manage to personify his soul into a purple prose demon.

**_Tales of woe from the inconsiderate traveler._ **

It was probably Kirijo’s influence. It certainly wasn’t Akihiko’s. Or perhaps it wasn’t a question of whether he grew like so, but rather of Castor having chosen him because it had related to his fundamentally inborn worship of both violence and sappy poetry. Him, all jagged edges and taut strings of fate, ready to snap.

A group of four were in the middle of the street, loudly arguing where to next take the party. There was no one in sight and the streets were empty except for their echoes as they verbally fought over which bar to debauch in, which nightclub to dance, which cherry to pop.

Shinjiro groaned. “Stop it.” He faintly told Castor, already predicting his own sway of emotions, the way its hands slowly closed around his throat. It was fine. He’d been over this. The whole world got to live free while he dragged his feet, heavy with a chain and a persona attached. Such were the order of things.

The wind picked up and Shinjiro brought up his hands to his exposed arms. His only jacket had been stolen at the last shelter he slept in and he hadn’t bothered to get a new one since, though he assumed he’d be alright until October reared its ugly head. Thankfully his body was built like a furnace so his slim wallet had the chance to hold on a few days longer. Another gust of wind forced his hand to grasp at his beanie, raising his head up to keep it from falling. Again, he groaned.

Shinjiro hated the night sky. He hated the stars, the moon and the night and everything it brought. He’d kept his head low and his stance arched to keep up with it and gained fame as a thug by mere happenstance of the archetype, secretly glad that the rumors surrounding him made him especially unapproachable. He looked down as he walked and tried to not raise a fuss of the details as to why, even if Castor never forgot – his persona would periodically remind him that his heart was too soft for hate and that he was doing a disservice to himself by hiding away from his pains as if they’d never existed. 

It hurt. He lowered his head and continued his walk, pretending that the pain didn’t bore his heart fresh cavities. His neck wasn’t apt to rise above the muddled ground yet, the one that threatened to engulf him whole if he didn’t care to so much as breathe properly, and every time he tried he felt as if all the waste in the world would clamor for a spot in his lungs.

Castor roared inside his head at his thoughts, the only way it knew how to laugh. It sounded like a stampede, a million horses thundering their hooves along his muscles and bones, reminding him of who he was and what part he took in _his own_ mess, and it hurt more than it should. Castor’s fingers twitched from their familiar spot on top of Shinjiro’s shoulders, inching ever so slightly towards his neck.

**_I am thou, thou art I._ **

“ _Shut up_.” He got it, he understood, he saw in-between the lines, read the fine print – Castor was him and he was Castor, and Castor wanted him dead.

At this rate he’d never survive the Dark Hour. Or maybe, at this rate, others wouldn’t survive it instead.

The group must have heard him, if their shifty glances and hushed conversation were anything to go by. He had half a mind to keep it to himself, continue his aimless path and not barter for another brawl (he sure as shit hadn’t healed from the last one) – but even if his heart was soft and his soul torn and his head kept telling him that _he was a waste of a human being with no redeeming qualities who should just die die **die** -_…he couldn’t. So he stopped, turned around and stood there, blood scorching in his veins.

They were four, probably older than him, probably looking for the kind of stress relief that they surely wouldn’t find with him. “You think you’re hot shit?” The one with bleached blond hair took the first step, fist raised and a mean glint in his eyes. “Wan’ a piece of this?” The streets were wide and without a soul in sight. The light of the street lamp above cast a perfect yellow ring on the pavement.

Castor grinned.

Shinjiro tugged his beanie further down his head. It was nighttime in September and he was out and about with a black t-shirt and a pair of jeans, yet his fingers shook with something other than cold and his neck was surprisingly humid. The adrenaline was setting in.

The blonde guy approached him slowly, questioningly, but Shinjiro was the one to swing the first blow. He took two steps forward and let his fist fly without precision, not fully expecting it when the guy dodged with a side step. The blonde was enraged, now with both of his fists raised and a tempest in his eyes.

One of his mates approached from the left, another from the right, and the fourth one he didn’t see coming as much as he felt it – the impact of a fist on his face left him stunned for a moment, made him stumble to the side, arm loosely raised in what Akihiko would’ve undoubtedly called a ‘ _sorry excuse of a block_ ’. He was vaguely aware of his beanie falling on the ground, preoccupied mostly with how to keep said ground from spinning too fast, but the assailant wasn’t so slow on the intake and promptly exclaimed what the rest of them were thinking:

“What the- he’s just a kid?”

Castor narrowed its glare.

The world became less fuzzy when Shinjiro’s fist collided with the thug’s mouth. He ducked away from a blow from his right and took another straight in the chest, proud that his body barely hunched over. In one swift motion he grabbed the fist that struck him and twisted it into an unnatural position and as his opponent screamed he shoved him against the closest of the bunch. 

Castor _roared_.

This wasn’t going to be a fun night.

-

The stars looked down on him, a mix of disappointment and weird exultance in their shine, as if humming both their worry and approval. Left the last man standing, Shinjiro defiantly looked up again, too deep in adrenaline to either feel his bruised body or the ever present pull of dark thoughts as he grinned at nowhere in particular.

‘ _See that, Aki?_ ’

But the feeling didn’t last long. It lasted, in fact, as long as it took him to blink, to focus. There were three groaning bodies at his feet, shook from the fight, and another one laid limp against the nearest wall, hair moussed against his forehead, nose caked in blood.

Suddenly the urge to vomit became too intense to handle. He had it in him to turn away before doubling over himself, knuckles white as he hooked his fingers to the front of his shirt, on top of where his heart should be, in a vain attempt to grow out a new set of lungs before hurling last night’s meager dinner on the floor. The taste of bile revolted him, left him pale and unsteady more so than the lack of a proper meal ever did. He heaved until there was nothing left, until the gag reflex was accompanied by gusts of desperate air.

His mistake, he realized, was turning back to look at the guy again – the adrenaline was dissipating and with every blink the man’s face morphed into a rounder shape, less of a man and more of a teenager. He could be his age for all he knew, in the same way that he was a teenager to only the select few who dared to look him in the eyes. The teen was still limply slouching against the wall when one of his mates approached him warily and gingerly shook his shoulder.

There was no response.

From the corner of his eye he saw the shadow of a motherless boy kneeling down, the weight of a new reality too much to bear on his small shoulders as he realized that life would never be the same. Then he blinked the dark spots away, and the boy was gone.

But Castor had no eyelids. **_It_** didn’t care for nightmares hiding in street corners or pathetic excuses that blinked away reality, because it saw the clearest of truths in the road in which it galloped over, and it knew that the pavement was the result of blood and dirt sifted so thoroughly that it muddied its journey and slowed its movements, and Castor was furious that it no longer had the freedom to ride wherever it wanted to.

( ** _I am thou, thou art I._** )

So it didn’t come as a surprise when Shinjiro felt the pull of darkness by its hands, felt his neck constrict and tighten until it couldn’t close in no more, gargled on whatever noises came out of his mouth and, as he often allowed, closed his eyes to the inevitable.

Castor never finished the job. Sometimes it seemed close, trotted alongside the edge too many times for him to not see just how much of a miracle it was that a year of this shit had passed by and he hadn’t fallen over that particular cliff just yet. It wanted to – oh, it sure wanted to – but there was always something holding him back.

By the time Shinjiro woke up from his stupor the Dark Hour had already crawled its way into motion. He belatedly took in the greyish walls and white beds and glared over his headache and over the drip-dripping noise of blood running down the curtains and concluded that sometime, in between this and that, he had been taken to a hospital.

Outside of Iwatodai city the dark hour didn’t breathe the same presence as it did between its bounds. But as days blended into months its area of effect had grown to defy these expectations – it festered like a decease, a literal miasma, growing thicker here and there, making it harder to see on the spots where the moon didn’t shine. At times he’d hear inaudible voices whispering sweet nothings into his ear, and despite their consistency he’d chalked it up to his own paranoia.

Shinjiro often wondered if the Dark Hour had any edges, any determinable limitations. Did it ever end? Was the whole world like this? He pried his memories in search of Mitsuru, whose conversations he often recalled when trying to piece together the scattered puzzle of available information. He’d never tell her that though. He’d never get the chance to, anyway.

Outside the window, right by the building, Castor had physically manifested and was looking towards the sky and the stars in silent conversation, and Shinjiro picked up his things and left.

As he walked Castor aligned itself behind him, its hands already hovering over its favorite spot before dropping down without fanfare. Shinjiro just kept walking and credited its inaction to the immediate need to move through his exhaustion. He focused on the throbbing of his wounds and the motions of his legs and eventually, when the Dark Hour reached its end, he pulled out his mechanical watch from his pocket and prepared it to run for another twenty-four hours. The watch clicked into place and its seconds ticked steadily, gifting Shinjiro enough repose to continue down his path.

-

9/ 28/ 2008 • Su, Morning

The next day he pulled the edges of a newspaper that had been unceremoniously thrown inside a garbage can. The title on the third page read “Four Injured in Downtown Brawl”, immediately lessening his weight. On its corner the date was inked black with a thin letter font, the cheap paper smudged by the previous fingers that held it. He already knew, of course, but the reaffirmation doubled the pain on his chest.

Time had come for him to return to Iwatodai. He’d considered it before; he just wasn’t expecting the day to have come so fast. Though still young in age Shinjiro liked to think that he was more knowledgeable, not so much older but alas wiser than before, and he knew his was a fate he couldn’t keep on avoiding.

Still, he was finding it hard to breathe.

-

9/ 30/ 2008 • T, Afternoon

From beyond the train windows Iwatodai city seemed to have remained the same type of nonsense he’d once gotten used to. It was dumb to think him leaving changed things in some way, or that there would be fanfare awaiting his return. Shinjiro left a different person than the one he came back as and yet the world remained the same, unmoving, unchanging.

Castor grit its teeth inside his head, an unpleasant grind of bone that sent chills down his spine; yet it felt different, as if Castor was too distracted with something else to hammer down its usual, violently metaphorical views of life down his throat. When Shinji squinted his eyes on the stars faintly shining beyond the warm colors of the sky he felt the pull of something familiar, the distinct presence of a set of grey eyes pinning him into place, homing in on his location.

“No.” He whispered to no one and thanked whatever deity existed that the train was near empty, because he felt that a storm was about to come. In one second Castor seized him by the neck with its monumental strength. “I’m not here to see him,” he tried to convince himself, but Castor merely tightened its grip. Its ghostly head hovered somewhere along Shinji’s line of sight, red irises shaking with wants and needs that he didn’t want to indulge in.

He leaned against the closed doors of the train and slid down – his head was spinning, as if underwater, with a building pressure behind his eyes and ears. His breath came out ragged, then barely perceptible as Castor’s grip tightened more and more, blocking blood from running to his head. His heartbeat doubled its speed and his feet kicked out at nothing.

Castor’s growl came out bloodcurdling. It was hard to believe they were the one and the same.

Beyond the dots that colored his vision black he saw a mop of bright red hair approach him. A woman was staring at him, intently so, apparently passive towards his unorthodox struggle in a six o’clock train on a week day. The train cart kept rumbling and everything was going dark and she just stared, but then there was a brush of cloth against his skin and her fingers were prying his mouth open, shoving something inside. He felt a sudden jolt of sensory overload – the air gained a taste and it tasted the way he always thought trains would, like sweat and dust and menthol gum; the woman in front was white like a porcelain doll perfumed with raspberry glycerin soap; somewhere close by there was a window open and he could just feel the sea’s waves crash behind his nose-!

He could breathe.

The numbness slowly settled in after that. Whatever floodgates opened were abruptly shut and trapped beneath a slab of concrete, itself hidden behind the worn, fuzzy drape of a curtain that if he could touch he was sure matched the ones from the orphanage’s common room. Castor was behind that slab, angry at its confinement, but though he could feel his hoof vibrating against its enclosure he could no longer feel the pain of its existence.

There was a lump in his throat that he quickly swallowed, tasting the leftovers of a powdery pill leaving its chemical trail on his tongue. The woman sighed, the finely detailed white dress following her movement, her sharp eyes only betraying the most distant ounces of worry. Kneeling beside him, on the hidden space between seats, dressed up in her best cosplay and looking at a homeless kid in the eye, she finally addressed him. “You’re a persona user.”

It was a statement.

“How did you get it?” That was a question.

He was on the verge of mouthing a slew of obscenities when she ordered him to be quiet, reminding him that this was real life, not a fever dream, and that people would definitely be within reason to carry him to a mental asylum for acting cuckoo outside happy hours. But it didn’t stop him from closing his open mouth. Castor was angry, threateningly so, but his throat was intact and his brain didn’t feel like popping off like a cork on a champagne bottle. “What did you do?” His voice was still raspy and as he palmed the skin around his neck he touched the indents of where Castor’s fingers had gripped.

“You should hide that.” She pointed out. Immediately she seemed to regret doing so – she got up and looked away, into the ocean, one of her arms gripping the other. He got up with her. “People will ask questions.”

“ **I** have a lot of questions.”

She stabbed him with a glare. “And if you want more of those pills then you’ll ask none of them.”

The authoritative tone this small specimen of a human being directed him with was not pleasing in the slightest. After a year of roaming around, minding his own business, he’d be in a foul mood to let himself be lectured by a new Mitsuru in the making, red hair and all. “I don’t give a shit.” She recognized him as a persona user, 'healed' him with a snap of her fingers – did she have a persona as well? Did Aki know about this? Did Mitsuru!? He couldn’t feel Polydeuces’ eyes searching for him anymore, as if his forcibly imposed medicine did more than just hide his persona from himself.

Up from the speakers the mechanical voice announced their arrival at Iwatodai Station.

The girl humphed, displeased with his rude behavior. She grabbed his hand and pulled him close, until they were mere inches apart, and slipped an orange pill bottle onto his palm. She wore platform shoes, he noted, or else she’d be even smaller, and as it was the top of her head barely reached his chin. “I’ll find you when you decide to give a shit.” Before he had time to interject, she shoved past him and left.

-

10/ 1/ 2008 • W, ?

Those pills had been both the best and the worst thing he’d ever gotten his hands on. They were easily the best fix he’d ever tried, but sometimes he’d blink and magically teleport to a different place. And he slept a lot. God knows where. But he didn’t care.

He’d already taken an ungodly amount of pills but he didn’t _feel_ like caring. Taking free drugs from strangers on the street felt in tune to the type of person he was – or maybe used to be, it was hard to distinguish the timelines sometimes. Whatever the case, each second he passed without them was a second too long. Agonizing. Literal, heartbreaking, pain.

But even though Castor was a far gone memory he still felt like death.

Damn. He was falling asleep again. In a blink he was at the park bench, hunched over himself and coughing his lungs out, but in another he was in a dark alley. He blinked a few more times and then woke up with a startle, shielding his face with his arms. Of course there was no one there, just the sliver of a nightmare that he already forgot.

Good pills.

-

10/ 2/ 2008 • Th, ?

“She was a nurse.” He repeated over and over again. “She was a nurse she was a nurse she was a nurse-”

And he took her life, just like that. She probably saved a lot of lives, plenty more than she did while dead. Or maybe there were hospitals for dead souls. Would they accept his?

He looked at the dangerously light pill bottle and felt a shockwave punch his body to his knees, before doubling over and hurling his stomach out.

-

10/ 3/ 2008 • F, ?

He didn’t know where he was but he still kept track of the days – always hyper aware of the time, but not the place. Unsurprisingly, he wasn’t even aware of who he was.

But he was aware of the date. There was no amount of pills that could shake the date away. It brought with it a different kind of forced lucidity, like the universe wasn’t letting him escape it.

He shook his head. It was just a miserable a day as any other.

The pill bottle was almost empty.

When was the last time he ate?

…did it matter?

It hurt to think.

He blinked.

-

“I never had the potential.” He admitted to no one, gathering side eye glances from passersby who’d only see in him another punk with a drug addiction, hardly able to maintain his own weight. “I never… I shouldn’t have…”

-

10/ 4/ 2008 • Sa, Morning

He was at the cemetery.

Figures he’d go there. The sap. All of him cheap philosophy and violence and abandoned friends. ‘ _Fuck.._ ’

He blinked.

He was still at the cemetery. Still in Iwatodai too, said the sign at the entrance. It read…wait, it took him some time to read. It definitely had Iwatodai in the name. ‘ _Shite_ name’ he thought. ‘ _Cool story bro, who gives a shit_ ’, he answered himself.

Not two steps forward and he stumbled to his knees and then onto his back. His stomach growled at the excessive movement and tried in vain to wretch the pills that he’d taken minutes ago. He gulped them down.

The pill bottle was three pills away from empty.

He blinked.

There was shadow against his face and a small breeze against his nose and Aki was laying by his side, hands on his stomach, looking directly into the sun. But there couldn’t have been any shadows… it was close to noon.

“ _But there’s a shadow right there_.” The Akihiko said, in a voice he couldn’t hear.

“You should be in school.” He told the Akihiko.

Something beside him fidgeted, shifted in place, and a voice that definitely wasn’t Aki’s startled his eyes open. There was no Aki (he guessed there never was), but in his place was a boy of brown hair and doe, brown eyes, kneeling beside him and blocking the sun. “I should be…” he murmured. “But that’s not important at the moment. Are you ok?” Shinjiro wanted to move, but his body was weak and in pain. The boy beside him shifted to grab something from his bag. “Here.” He handed him a carton of apple juice. “Please drink. It has sugar – I’ve read that sugar is important when you’re feeling debilitated.”

Shinjiro slowly sat up. His head was a whirlwind of many things, not one of them sane, and his ears were ringing black shapes into his irises. He convinced himself he was doing a favor to the kid by taking the juice and sipping it dry with one gulp. His throat seemed pleased, but his stomach was grimy and foul and threatened him again with a violent twist of its walls. A groan escaped his mouth and the boy turned to dig into his schoolbag for something else.

“Eat this.” It was a sandwich wrapped in plastic along with a chocolate bar. “You’ll feel better.” When Shinjiro took too long to take the items the kid forced them onto his hands.

The longer he sat the better his vision became. The black dots dispersed and the static, though still there, lingered on the side, making way for his brain to further unravel the weight of the moment. His beanie was lying on the ground behind him and he thought about putting it on, but guiltily opted to instead shield his eyes with his hand, deceiving himself by saying it was because of the sun. “Thanks.” His voice was raspy and unpleasant, like the sound of chipping paint.

Ken Amada nodded. “I didn’t contact emergency services. I don’t possess a phone, but I can request one from a local store!” He seemed hesitant. “Would you wish me to..?” He felt older than he looked – the way he carried himself, the way he looked at him with worry; but the way he talked seemed odd, as if his little dictionary of a brain was purposely searching for the more complicated words to replace the simpler ones.

After a moment he answered “No.”

A tight smile made its way onto Ken’s face. “It’s ok. I don’t particularly enjoy hospitals either. The smell irks me. It might be the disinfectant.”

Shinjiro’s eyes were glossy behind his hand and he didn’t know what to make of it. The drugs in his system left him weirdly apathetic and insensitive to a lot, like the rubble that dug into his open palm on the floor or the way his clothes bunched up and tangled around his waist, but the more he sat there the more his lucidity grew to encompass the macabre situation he was in.

A boy and his mother’s murderer sat side by side at the gates of a cemetery. There was no punchline.

“Aw crap” Ken said, jumping to his feet. Something in the distance had caught his eye.

It was Shinjiro’s curse to have been born with empathetic eyes. He signaled for Ken’s attention with his hand and pointed his thumb behind him. “At the back, furthest corner at the right, there’s a hole in the wall that makes it easy to climb up.”

Though surprised, Ken started to walk back, turning around just in time to murmur a quick “Thank you” and lightly bowing before disappearing beyond the boundaries of the cemetery.

It didn’t take long for Shinji to realize whom it was he was hiding from. He counted the seconds until something happened, getting up to his unsteady feet and putting on his beanie in the meantime, and was none the least surprised when an adult in a formal suit ran up to him and asked if he’d seen a kid in a school uniform pass by. The adult eyed him with suspicion when Shinjiro refused to answer and then eyed him some more even when he finally told him he hadn’t seen no damn kid. “You’re Shinjiro Aragaki, right?”

He slowly blinked at the man until a scowl twisted his face. “You tell anything to Kirijo and I'll be sure to break your coffin open at night.”

When the man spoke next his voice carried the slightest of cracks. “Miss Kirijo told me there was a chance I’d run into you today, so she told me to give you this.” He rummaged inside his coat pocket, took out a flip phone and passed it onto Shinjiro with an open palm. Shinjiro, for his part, took the phone with a shaky hand and admired it for a moment, reflecting on how much it could’ve cost. If his memory was still intact (which he doubted, but still), Mitsuru had a penchant for the expensive, having never experienced life in any other fashion. He chuckled.

With what remained of his strength he smashed the phone on the ground and stepped on it for good measure.

The man in the suit looked down, his expression unreadable behind his dark sunglasses. He then sighed and reached out to the pocket on the opposite side, taking out another flip phone – this one evidently more expensive than the last. “She informed me that there was a chance this would happen as well.”

Shinjiro rubbed his temples in circular fashion. There was no headache to subside, but he still felt the imaginary tingle of annoyance that oh so commonly used to send him to his room at an earlier time, whenever Mitsuru involved him in some extravagancy he wasn’t used to. This whole ordeal was quite in the realm of those extravagant possibilities. It made him groan.

Still, he took the phone. There was that part in him that still liked owning stuff telling him to not be the kind of person that wasted good things twice in a row. And if he broke this phone, would he take out another? Fuck, whatever.

The man seemed pleased enough, eventually leaving when enough seconds had ticked by for it to start being awkward.

Later that night, when the drugs let in more breathing room for normalcy, he flipped through the contact list of the phone, consisting of not one, not two, but three different phone numbers, one for each member of SEES. Mitsuru took but a second to answer his call – he didn’t get to hear the end of the first ring as she had already replaced the sound with her stern voice. “ _You took initiative_.” She seemed more pleased than surprised.

Something twitched in his forehead. “What, you didn’t expect me to?”

She had the nerve to let out a small, dry laugh, as if sarcasm was her middle name, but Shinjiro was once again blighted by his pathetically empathetic, soft heart and understood the subtext behind the voice (the fine print, if you will). Kirijo had let out a shaky breath, glad that he was safe and also uncharacteristically nervous about how to react to his quips, reminiscent of a past that still lingered. She took a moment to regain her composure and then continued. “ _I deduce you’ve met Amada Ken and his guardian_.”

“That his guardian?”

“ _One of them, yes_.”

He rubbed his eyes. “Where are you?”

He could practically hear her gears turning from the other side of the phone. “ _At the dorm_.”

“Where?”

She sighed. “ _Akihiko is not present at the moment_.”

“So…” he fidgeted “…how’s he doin’?”

Mitsuru sounded faintly vexed. “ _Who, Akihiko? Or Amada Ken?_ ”

He deserved that painful twist of his heart. “Both.”

There was a pause. “ _I feel as though I should forge a narrative in which Akihiko was left severely hurt by your actions, but my standards are above any ‘guilt-tripping’. Instead, I will relay to you that in your absence he has become more of himself than usual, driven to make you portray yourself the same way he paints you_.” There was a ghost of a smile haunting his lips. “ _If there is a position to be taken here, rest assured that I am on par with his desire. Though I’d be far more agreeable to set up a date between the two of you if both of you restrained your methods of…dispute.”_

“You were always the funniest one of our group, Mitsuru.”

“ _Hmm_.” Her tone had a bit of mirth to it, despite its sharp edges. “ _As for Amada Ken, he’s in good hands_.”

“The kid skipped school today, you know?”

“ _I’m aware. Understand that, in the end, I can’t control how he lives his life, the same way I can’t control how you dictate yours. No matter how much I want to._ ”

“See that’s funny, because I know you had your suits poking their heads for me all the time.”

Mitsuru breathed the word ‘ _…suits?_ ’ in confusion before realizing what he meant. “ _I apologize for my decision in regards to that. I just…I acted impulsively. I shouldn’t have meddled with your affairs the way I did. I’m… sorry._ ”

He scratched the back of his neck. Mitsuru had a funny way of demonstrating affection and though it was high time she learned how to properly convey what she felt, that was a can of worms he wasn’t good enough to be in charge of. “Have you been eating well?”

If possible, he heard her smile. “ _I take it that you plan on disposing this mobile phone once this conversation reaches its finale?_ ”

He hummed. “Haven’t decided where to throw it yet.”

“ _I see_.” A pause. “ _Don’t mistake my lack of an aggressive pursuit as a sign that I am less invested in your well-being. That being said, I expect to hear from you if you ever feel the need. You know where to find me_.”

“Yeah… Thanks.”

Another pause. “ _I’m happy to know you’re well_.”

Another twist to the heart. He wasn’t so sure about that. “Same.”

-

10/ 4/ 2008 • Sa, Dark Hour

The withdrawal was driving him up the wall with itches and painful headaches – one of his hands was clapped on top of the other to keep it from fishing out the rest of the pills and his feet kept ambling around Port Island just so his body could keep working instead of falling over like putty. Getting a hang of how he used to live before the inhuman peace brought by the pills wasn’t something he ever thought he’d be doing and certainly something he wouldn’t allow to happen anytime soon. Who’d thought that he’d be struggling just so that he could exist as he used to merely a week ago. But he had to try – something about the conversation with Ken and the one with Mitsuru left him feeling oddly guilty.

He stumbled his way through the dark with the same type of effort it took Atlas to raise the entire sky. The pain he felt was immeasurable – Castor was relentless, hammering inside his skull with the might of the cosmos, screaming to be freed, and Shinjiro was just as obtuse with his half-assed, frenzied responses and meek attempts at conversation with himself which, of all people, he should know it to be futile.

He was a madman roaming the Dark Hour, expecting his screams to eventually fill the void and call out someone, anyone (something, anything!), to just put him out of his misery. His persona wasn’t letting up. His sanity was trickling away fast. He stopped for just a moment, leaned down to catch a breather and immediately Castor materialized in front of him and clasped its hands around his airways, pulling him up to its eye level but still directly speaking from inside his head.

**_Seize the boat you are a stowaway on._ **

He grabbed and pulled at Castors massive fingers to inch away, but the fight was lost in him quickly and his persona only seemed to tighten its grip at his dismissal. Breathing was becoming a chore.

**_Seize it._ **

The same way he seized that shadow a year ago? Or was it years before, the same way he seized the opportunity to join SEES and forced an uncontrollable persona out of his brain? FUCK what was he supposed to fucking seize – was it years before that, then!? When he saw Aki scream his throat out at the crackling fire to please let Miki go please there’s no one else _no one else please **please**_ -

**_You live in the past. In the past you are immortal._ **

“Shut up.”

**_Pain reminds you that you are human._ **

“I know.”

**_To be human is to die._ **

“I didn’t forget.”

**_But you deny._ **

He clawed at Castor’s hands but ended up squeezing his own neck instead. “And you didn’t?” His voice was raspy and inconsistent. “You and Polydeuces? You fucking – _my life is my own_ and I’ll do what I **_fucking_** want with it!” This was absurd – he was screaming at himself. “I’ll decide my own fate. **Me** , by my own terms!”

His body was flung across the alleys, crashing against the ground and against a sparse coffin for good measure. As a testament to Castor’s strength Shinjiro felt the ground rumble beneath the point of impact and was fairly sure that something on his ribcage had cracked.

**_You decide by laying still. To live is to act, not to breathe._ **

“Who gives a shit about what I don’t do?!”

**_You._ **

He coughed into his closed fists. “You’re full of shit you know that? Cryptic one liners and tall fucking stance, up there on your high horse.” Slowly, he got up to his feet. “What do you want from me!?” But of course, it was outside Castor’s area of influence to nudge Shinjiro with actual meaningful words. It got him so angry, so mind-numbingly furious. What was the world to expect of Shinjiro Aragaki, hard-ass seventeen year old barely in the making and already with a murder tucked right under his belt. With a strength that didn’t feel his, he ran towards Castor with a raised fist, only to again be grabbed by the neck and slammed against the ground.

**_To blame is to be inactive._ **

He tasted lead on the back of his throat that made it difficult to breathe, but the invisible blood that he knew to already coat his palms made it difficult to care; and Castor gripped harder. It may have been a product of blood loss that he saw the persona’s small pupils tremble with unsaid words, felt its fingers shake with something other than rage.

Out there, by himself, there was a boy inside a coffin waiting to wake up from his nightmare of dead mothers and empty houses only to realize that life itself was a nightmare and it had Shinjiro’s name on the director’s seat.

Castor’s grip increased tenfold.

**_Warriors learn, they do not forget. Forgetting is but shallow relief._ **

Out there, Ken Amada lived every day without the comfort of the parent Shinjiro stole from him. Every day, no, every second Shinjiro felt the pain of a phantom limb he never had, the actual understanding that he took someone else’s life, someone that would be living and breathing if it weren’t for him, cooking meals for her child and grasping his small hands in between hers whenever Ken needed reassurance. He choked. He took a life that wasn’t his. He’d never forget.

Castor’s grip loosened, then tightened again as Shinjiro grabbed the pill bottle from his pocket.

He’d never forget, but that didn’t mean he was about to hate himself less for it. It didn’t mean he had to move on. It meant he had to carry the burden.

For the first time in what seemed like forever, Shinjiro looked at the sky and took a deep breath, and popped a pill into his mouth.

The usual high he got turned against himself and he was assaulted with a primordial pain from every nerve in his body. He was hyper aware of everything around him, but mostly of himself – of the itch of every internal wound, the sound of every torn muscle, the taste of rust and the scent of iron that pervaded his whole body. It was like he was burning, or something worse, excruciating, like his nails and teeth were being pulled, but mortal words were no match for what he felt. He wanted to die, but he needed to live. To just live, to just breathe, because at least _that_ he had been allowed in his early years. And then it passed.

**_Coward._ **

The toxic green tint of the moon soon came to pass and its light was replaced by the faint hum of the electrical post right beside him. Slowly, he got up.

10/ 5/ 2008 • Su, Early Hours

It was nothing short of a miracle, he thought, that his body was still intact, even after all it’s been through. With his large hands he cupped the entirety of his wrist and dryly laughed at how easily he could snap it in two if he wanted to, with his pointer and thumb easily overlapping over each other. He was hurting all over and if he cared enough to raise his sweater he’d see the extent of his bruises, of his fights with himself.

“ _Shinji!_ ”

He got whiplash from turning around too fast. With little to nothing in his stomach the motion left him dizzy and it took a moment for his eyes to adjust. By the second to third blink the first thing he saw was the blur of a gloved fist erupting against his face and he knew immediately whom it was he was dealing with.

His ass fell on the ground. “What the hell Aki!”

Akihiko had no time to quarrel about with pleasantries of the conversational variety. Riled up after months of being apart, he took Shinji by the front of his turtleneck and pulled him to his feet. He wound up his arm for another punch, but stopped himself short once he noticed Shinjiro wasn’t about to move. His face was contorted, confused and angry and relieved all at the same time. Beneath the surface of his skin the thunder clouds raged and exploded before starting a de-stressing process of their own, parting away just enough to stop creating static.

Polydeuces felt pleased, but soon its pleasure turned to confusion when it couldn’t locate Castor in all of its splendor. Aki was confused as to what to do, feeling the pull of a million questions but not knowing where to start. His fist slowly dropped, then raised again, then dropped for good. His shoulders were shaking and Shinjiro stood still, heart pounding, unsure of what to do. If he didn’t know any better he’d think Akihiko would openly start crying, something he’d swore off on doing ever since that fateful day, but instead Aki leaned his forehead towards Shinji’s shoulder and stayed like so for a quiet moment. Eventually, Shinjiro raised a shaky arm of his own, and reassuringly patted his back.

“You came back.” Aki’s voice was hoarse and out of breath.

Unwilling to savor the moment any longer, Shinjiro pushed him away. “I’m not coming back.”

The air turned heavy and sour. Akihiko blinked slowly – it was a testament to their friendship just how well Shinjiro understood what was going on inside his head before he got to put it to words; things like ‘ _what do you mean_ ’ and ‘ _how do you mean it_ ’. He’d ask if that entailed not returning to SEES or school or even to the dorm or, even still, if that meant his time in Iwatodai itself was limited, something Shinjiro himself wouldn’t be able to answer. “You-” Whatever he’d wanted to ask got lost in translation as Akihiko instead grabbed Shinji by the collar. “You know how much I worried about you all this time? _Do you even care?_ ”

Shinjiro wrenched Akihiko’s hand away, but got punched in the mouth for his troubles. He’d received another one if he hadn’t jerked to the right and another still if he hadn’t thrown his arms up in a block. But Akihiko was anything but unprepared and when Shinji’s forearms blocked his jab he came swinging with a hook from the right that left him stunned for a second or two.

He shook it off. Inside Shinjiro lived a type of fire that he couldn’t name, a throb that called him to anger and violence, traits of his that burned so hot that he felt the made up barriers that separated him from Castor melt into nothing. He didn’t know where Castor ended and where he began, but he did know that Aki was good at calling them forth. He didn’t know if fighting prowess came a close second, but when Akihiko recovered from his own swing and wound up to launch another, Shinjiro struck first with a shattering right hook. For one glorious moment he felt foul pride at his advantageously long arms, but then Akihiko stumbled backwards and gripped his head. Down his nose streaked a drop of red that he was quick to wipe away and Shinjiro was reminded of why they were having this fight in the first place.

He took a look at his open palm and had a vision of his life flashing before his eyes up until that exact moment and all he saw were the reflections of him as a boy, a child, a teenager, all looking down at their own hands in different points in time. He closed it.

‘ _To live is not to breathe, but to act’,_ he thought. For an entire second Castor, from far, far away (beneath the concrete beneath the drapes), stopped its thrashing. It was expectant, waiting to see where this train of thought would leave him…but he’d be disappointed again. Shinjiro Aragaki, again, disappointed himself.

What a joke. If acting meant hurting Akihiko, _actually hurting_ _him_ , then he’d rather just breathe.

Ken’s mother was still dead and Ken himself would always spend his days running away from people in suits who wouldn’t know how to give a comforting hug if he needed one, because he would never be the kind of kid to ask for it in the first place. His comfort was in the cemetery, on a school day, hoping to be congratulated by a ghost on how strong he was for having lasted so long without crying. No one would reprimand him for helping a junkie off of the ground when it was dangerous to do so, and no one would teach him the appropriate scenarios in which to use big words like ‘ _debilitated’_ and ‘ _particularly’_.

Shinjiro’s body was bruised and hurting but Akihiko was strong and healthy so, if anything, the common denominator of bad things in his life was entirely the existence of a childhood friend that fought to remain alive despite not really wanting to, despite not deserving to. Aki would eventually learn to live without him and Mitsuru would be there to diligently pick up the pieces because Mitsuru too would learn to live and let go, so she wouldn’t have to stay up all night with her phone in hand hoping he’d call at an unsightly hour for a pack of ice and a trip to the hospital.

He let his open palm fall to his side.

Castor was under too many layers to see.

He pushed Aki away and walked past him. For his part, Akihiko seemed to be allowing him.

“I won’t give up on you Shinji.” He said, but let him go all the same.

Shinjiro cleaned the trickle of blood off of his chin and took out his pocket watch, turned it to run close to another 24 hours and walked away with it in hand, hearing the familiar clicks of its gears as time was reset for another day.


	2. That First Full Moon

4/ 6 • M, Night

His days were a blend of messy events, so much so that not long ago he’d begun craving for the quietude of the Dark Hour, ached for it, even, and that made him feel…bizarre. The hour after midnight still left him jumpy, even though his persona was suppressed, just not as restless as he’d once been. He dared say that he’d begun to feel accommodated by it, even if he shouldn’t, and not just because the shadows were more prevalent in Iwatodai – or maybe that was a plus for him. He’d rather not think about it.

It didn’t matter. There he stayed, on the verge of sleep yet never not alert, because for whatever reason the chaotic rhythm of his soul hadn’t yet allowed him a normal schedule with at least seven hours of rest. Not that he understood the contents of normalcy – for a while now he’d only inhabited its fringes.

Shinjiro sat down at the stairs in front of the usual joint, the one that always smelled of smoke, with the occasional mahjong piece thrown out the window… and the occasional person. It didn’t bother him, sitting so close, because something about that spot left him spellbound: the fact that the stairs were prime seating for the dichotomy of noise and the complete silence of midnight, with a great, hypnotizing view of the moon.

Though he still wallowed in melancholy every time he raised his chin, he’d found a new appreciation towards the night sky. It didn’t suffocate him as much as it once did – Castor didn’t suffocate him as much as it once did – but it still hurt, which was perhaps the reason why he hadn’t given up. Sometimes he’d look up and have the stars burned into his retinas, forcing him to remember what he constantly tried to forget – that he was perpetually sinking into the mud of the path he traveled in, no matter how much he tried to stick his neck out, even if Castor wasn’t there to stomp him lower anymore.

He took a suppressant, the usual high making him hyper aware of everything in his proximity. In Port Island Station there was the sound of a late train rolling in for the last stop of the day, something he could hear just as well as the ticking pointers of his watch from inside the breast pocket of his jacket. When the high died down his unease mellowed a bit, but from the inside of his soul the echo of his persona was still loud, pounding angrily against his ribcage, the force making him cough as he reeled in the need to pop in another pill and dull it down. Instead, he reached for his watch and gazed over its pointers as they ticked close to midnight and then stopped. For such an old thing, it still worked remarkably well.

He looked up at the moon just as it changed its tint, furnishing the world in shades of sickly yellow and green, with harsh shadows to boot. The people who once surrounded him transmogrified and the normalcy of the macabre settled in once more.

But then there were footsteps. Shinjiro jumped to his feet but took no immediate action. Though he had no evoker, a lonesome shadow was usually easy enough to deal with, even if bare fisted, and sometimes Castor would unpredictably pop out for a spin on its own, itching for a fight.

Predictably so, Castor kept pounding his soul into gear, screaming to be let out, to fight, to do _something_ , the pill having had no effect against the flow of adrenaline, and as Shinji found out he was cross to not allow it the pleasure. He would have to be dense to not realize that the need to fight was in him as well, a violent personality trait that he’d (stupidly) only realized was his after taking the suppressants. He’d really rather not think about it.

It was hard to delve into the philosophical with him as a subject, but at least he didn’t have to dwell on it as he used to, not when the voice in the back of his head was muffled by his medication and made easier to smother.

Cautiously, he took a few steps towards the entrance of the alley, peeking out from behind the corner. There, standing in between the coffins of the plaza, looking around with half lidded eyes to what should have been the unfurl of a nightmare, a girl in a Gekkoukan High uniform was messing with her mp3 before giving up entirely, sighing and continuing her walk, travel bag in tow. She was, objectively, one of the most daunting things he’d seen in a while.

“What the-” Shinjiro stopped himself short, realizing that the place would probably echo. He’d known that he’d eventually run into other people inside this nightmare, he just didn’t expect them to look this…dull. Maybe she had the potential, or maybe she was one of the recently named ‘apathy syndrome’ cases. He always knew they had something to do with the Dark Hour – he’d seen one or two by the alleys, struggling to blink themselves awake, though always during daytime. The hollow thud of responsibility nagged him to approach Mitsuru with this possibility, but thankfully the drugs dialed his impulses down a peg and so he just watched.

He watched the girl of auburn hair and unmistakable red eyes amble down the road and out of his sight and didn’t find it pressing to question her on her demure pace or apathetic stare; perhaps because he found empathy in it.

Whatever. He didn’t care.

-

4/ 7 • T, Afternoon

“You’re not allowed in here. You’re fired.”

“Huh?”

The old chef with a bald spot propped his arms on his hips and glared at Shinjiro from behind the smoke of his cigarette. “You can’t honestly believe I’d take you in again, after yesterday’s mess.”

Annoyed, Shinjiro scratched the inside of his ear with his pinky finger and remarked with disinterest that “Those punks were about to brawl inside your joint – far as I know, I was doing you a favor.” Akihiko’s hollow brain must have rubbed off on him at some point because he couldn’t, for the life of him, realize what the problem was.

The man’s frown deepened. “Those _punks_ were the boss’s _kids_.”

“Whatever” he groaned, giving up, raising his hand towards the man while taking note of how normal it looked when in contrast to a few months ago. “Give me my money and I’ll be on my way.”

The man sneered, crossing his arms over his chest.

_That_ he understood. “You owe me a week of free labor you clown!”

“I owe you _nothing_.” The man reached out and tried to grab Shinjiro by the arm, but all his hand got was a smack in return. Visibly hurt but unrelenting, he continued, shaking the bruise away. “All you junkies are the same – money this money that – if you want a fair business go ahead and complain to the cops.”

“Junkie?” He was growing aggravated.

“Your nervous ticks, the way you keep scratching the back of your hands, how you zone out sometimes. I took you in despite your shady look so you should be thankful, not demanding.”

Unaware of his own movements Shinji grabbed the man by the collar and pulled him in, fuming. The man fumbled his way down the lonely step that led to the back entrance of his restaurant and would have hit the ground face first if not for Shinjiro’s impressive show of strength in holding him up. But half way through his veiled threat Shinji realized that this was not how he should be conducting things and let the man go with a push.

He had half a mind to step over the lit cigarette that had fallen on the ground before tugging down the front of his beanie as he left towards the main street. Thankfully, no one saw them – he had enough of a reputation on certain circles that people knew to leave him alone, but that also meant he was worse off in trying to find low level jobs, furthering how difficult it’d be to pay for his…medication.

Absentmindedly, he moved to scratch at the skin on the back of his hands before grabbing onto it instead, annoyed. His knuckles were calloused from fighting and his skin was dry and rough to the touch, a testament to the monumental amount of dishes he’d scrubbed clean in the last two months, yet they looked oddly healthy. His body too felt passable enough to live in, unlike before wherein it felt riddled with bruises, even where there were none. Not to say that he didn’t get bruised anymore, because delinquents in Iwatodai were weirdly confrontational, unlike any other place he’d ever been in, and sometimes he had to assert himself and demonstrate just how much he was not into this dance of territoriality. As long as they let him be, he promised to not send their collective behinds to the hospital.

…but he’d be lying if he said he didn’t go out into the wrong side of town once or twice expecting a fight to break out. He never initiated it, not anymore, too high and mighty (just like Castor) to throw the first punch, though the fact that he was there when he shouldn’t was reason enough. It was abhorrently funny how well adjusted he was to live off of a life of violence like he was bred to it. There had been SEES, and it’d be inane of him to assume that _that_ had nothing to do with his ingrained sixth sense for combat, but it was a mediocre explanation at best when concerning the way he sought for conflict as if it was his birthright.

It hadn’t always been like this, was what he’d like to think, but deep inside he knew better. He was both violent and brash and mean, yet his actions painted in him a canvas of regret every night before falling asleep and he was the type to go soft whenever something cute caught his eye. Conclusively, said a magazine he got his hands on once, he was an attention seeking child.

He rubbed his temples. Admittedly, his tendencies have only strayed further into violence ever since Castor toned it down with the chokeholds. He didn’t know what to make of it. Realizing Castor wasn’t a part of this problem was one thing and realizing that his fists have only grown more calloused ever since he started taking the pills was, well, it was…

It was nothing. Unrelated, unallied. Independent facts that did not, could not, be correlated to one another.

The pills made him stronger, more able-bodied. Ever since he took them he’d been secure in his steps instead of dragging his feet. His body felt decent, for a change, and he felt decent with it. If he took his thumb and middle finger and circled them around his wrist he’d find that they just barely touched. Most of all he felt normal, glad that he no longer had business with personas or personae or maybe just fucking jolly that he didn’t have to deal with Castor anymore. He could sleep peacefully on most nights and his days were just as pleasant, and if he felt the need to punch somebody he’d do it for his own pleasure and not because his soul was thirsting for some kind of resolve.

Shinjiro stopped to take a breather.

His throat wasn’t being ensnarled but the sudden urge to cough caught him off guard all the same, enough for him to double check for any afterimages in the shape of a skull face and to brush his fingers against his own neck in search for marks, a habit he struggled to lose. As the unavoidable coughing spree squeezed his lungs he perked up at the sound of hooves rumbling inside his head, but thought better than to try and take another pill – his stash was low and he needed to be sparse until he found another means of income.

The sound of laughter shook him out of his stupor. His feet had led him around Tatsumi Port Island, on his way towards the alleys where he frequently passed the time, but he unwittingly took the path that neared Gekkoukan High which, at this point of the day had students pouring out of the front gates in a rush to catch the earliest train ride home.

He clicked his tongue, angry at his obliviousness even though he’d done this commute to work every day for the past months. He doubled his attention before veering to the side, fully intent on taking the long route if that meant the chances of encountering Akihiko were lowered. It was just as Mitsuru had once said – they guy never let up and continuously forced himself onto Shinjiro’s life whenever he got the chance. He never lingered, though, which was a surprisingly mature thing to do on his part, and a confident position to take too, as if assuming that he could pop in and out of his day to check up on him with assuredness that he’d still be there in either the next day or three days after, no matter how rude Shinjiro was to him.

Again, the sound of laughter caught his attention. On his way to be out of the way he caught a glimpse of the girl from the previous night walking a few feet in front. She was, unexpectedly so, lively and animated, a stark contrast to last night. She was laughing at whatever it was that the person beside her – a guy in a blue cap – was currently saying, and Shinjiro was suddenly more than aware of their closeness, of how the gap between their bodies was so small that their arms frequently brushed against one another.

‘ _Huh_ ’ he thought and lightly dusted his foggy memory. She turned to look at the guy in the blue cap and Shinjiro recognized her for sure as the same girl. Her red eyes were too striking to forget, but the way she moved and the way the corners of her eyes crinkled as she openly smiled left such a contrast that for a moment her whole being encompassed the meaning behind ‘uncanny valley’. He blinked and took one last good look at the couple, then at the girl, letting his eyes linger on the hairpins that adorned the left side of her head with the roman numeral for twelve. A chill ran up his spine, but he didn’t dwell on it and moved on.

-

4/ 9 • Th, Night (Full Moon)

He arrived at his apartment tired and battered. He hadn’t gotten into a fight as much as he not so ignorantly stumbled into one when making way through a street that he knew better than to just stroll by. Despite being caged away in a place its forceful nature couldn’t reach, Castor’s pleased sigh wafted through his body and left behind ripples of satisfaction along his muscles, de-stressing the knots in his body.

On his way up the stairs he was intercepted by his landlord who warned him of his due rent, effectively spoiling the pleasant coolness that always mellowed his body after a fight. The landlord’s tone was dangerously close to that of the kitchen chef that had fired him, addressing him as not only the low life that he was, but also as the junkie that he appeared to be. It wasn’t that he said it out loud, but Shinjiro had eyes on his face and an obnoxiously intractable attention to detail and he knew what the man’s shifty glances down his pocketed hands meant; as if he’d bust out a needle and stab him with it if he wasn’t careful.

Shinjiro muttered his apologies and retreated to his apartment. The landlord wasn’t the one to blame and there weren’t many renters out there that readily accepted their monthly dues in cash. It wouldn’t be a stretch to imagine that he’d soon find himself in a tight spot again, now that he had no job to his name. Perhaps, he though with a grimace, it was time he took another loan from the sleaze balls over in the alleys, even though his last experience left him broken in more places than one.

But he needed the money. From his pocket he took out the last of his pill bottles, with only half of its contents visible beyond the orange case. A mental tally of its insides left his blood simmering, if only a little. These would last him for little more than a week, if he was sparse with their intake and if nothing riled up Castor awake from its slumber.

His apartment was a small, one room deal with no bathroom to call its own – that privilege, as well as the kitchen, was a communal state of affairs set out on the top floor of the building, which he had to share with every other resident. It wasn’t as bad as he first thought it would be, reminiscent of how things used to run at the orphanage though with less yelling and tighter scheduling for the availability of hot water. The landlord was nice enough, but he was the stingiest with expenses of the sort.

On top of his small table stood the leftovers from lunch, wrapped neatly under plastic wrap. Though not particularly hungry, Shinjiro forced himself to eat the bland mixture of rice and canned goods, thinking that there had to be a way to make everything more flavorful if he just cared enough.

His watch eventually stopped ticking and within the span of a blink the Dark Hour crept in.

But something wasn’t right. It set him on edge, a feeling he couldn’t shake off. He felt the subtle touch of dread raise the hairs in his arms when the blood that dripped down the walls of his place felt thicker and warmer to the touch and he knew then that something repugnant was lingering in the night. Beyond his window were splotches of black ink with blue masks crawling in the distance, just past the darkest of spots wherein electrical lights could no longer reach.

He left his room in a hurry, jumping down each set of stairs as if they were on fire, and dashed out of the front door. Outside the air was wretched, thick with the type of poisonous miasma that clung to his skin and to the back of his throat and his trepidation towards the hour didn’t lessen when three Cowardly Mayas fled from him like _he_ was the plague. Three shadows alone were more than the usual. Something wasn’t right.

Shinjiro grabbed his head with both hands as Castor woke up from his deep sleep and prayed to whatever powerful deities that still ruled this world that the night wouldn’t make him take more pills out of his tightly measured stash. His persona wasn’t about to rise just yet, but the concrete prison above Castor’s head was cracked and ready to crumble and with each new shadow spotted the more it shook to be let out. For the moment, the stampede in Shinjiro’s bones wasn’t untamable, even if Castor shook the inside of his skull with its fists.

Annoyed, he rushed towards a stray one that clamored further away from the rest, taking it by surprise with a whistle and a swift, well-aimed punch to its mask. It felt incredible, to let out his ire at something that he could break and mangle, but as he watched the shadow melt into a smear of ink on the floor he noticed how Castor’s own shadow was already draping over him.

He’d forgotten how massive his persona was. He glanced over his shoulder and towards Castor’s awaiting glare, just as red and relentless as he remembered. As he begun uttering an apology, even if he wasn’t sure on what, he stopped himself short before the first words got to pass through his lips, realizing he was apologizing to himself.

For its part, Castor hunched over slightly and took the small inky shadow in its massive hand, crushing it to fine powder like it was nothing. The feeling left him exhilarated, like he could do this all night and never get tired, and that was precisely what he wanted to avoid. His persona looked at him, awaiting his command, and Shinjiro had seawater in his head and sand in his tongue and every time he moved his lips to talk all that came out was a garbled nonsense of coughs and wheezes. Castor’s glare burned the back of his neck, but he had to fight the need to fight, to be violent, because he was not going to be the deciding factor of yet another person’s mortality.

He reached inside his pocket for the suppressants just as Castor’s hands sank around his neck, but then something called for their attention. He turned his head towards nothing – the night was still wrought with pestilence that clogged up his nose and itched at his eyes, but in the distance Polydeuces’ silent call was just as clear as if it was right beside him. “Aki?”

He sprinted towards the source. Castor vanished into thin air and tried in vain to further the conversation between its brother, just enough for Shinji to know which direction to take his legs. Akihiko was close but something was wrong and Castor was not informing him of much besides flourishing an urgent panic in his heart and the burning dread in his veins.

As he turned the final corner he was met with a wall of smoke so thick that it burned his eyes. With desperation he waved a path in front of him and when the cloud started to settle he bore witness to a scenario straight out of his nightmares: Akihiko was leaning against a wall, in the process of getting up, struggling for breath; his gloved hands were fisted against one side of his ribcage, twisting the vest above it into a spiral; his legs were unsteady and his shoulders were shaking, struggling to keep a straight back and a semblance of a blocking stance.

Next to him was one of the most unnatural shadows Shinjiro had ever seen, with as many arms as there were hours in a day, each of them holding a sharp object that very much looked like large kitchen knives. “AKI!”

Both Akihiko and the shadow turned to him in surprise, but Akihiko was slower on the intake, only realizing it was Shinjiro after two beats of his heart. “Shinji?” Aki seemed to have little to no immediate awareness of his surroundings; his head was lightly swaying from side to side, the probable result of a concussion, and he miserably tried to move forward but instead staggered and dropped to one knee. It left Shinjiro in a murderous mood, a thin veil of anger to mask just how fearful he truly felt.

The shadow dashed towards him like a centipede, quick and unpleasant to look at, giving Shinji goosebumps all over. He readied a fighting stance and realized almost too late that he had neither a weapon nor a persona to physically back him up, since Castor hadn’t shown up to take on the challenge yet. Luckily enough the shadow was in too fast to pull on the brakes when Shinjiro jumped to the side, and skidded its way through the pavement as Shinji took on a sprint of his own towards Aki, grabbing his evoker once he reached him.

Aki had one hand on his head and another on his knee, trying his best to keep himself from falling over, but it was a testament to his resilience how the impromptu distraction gave him just enough room to rest, enough for him to widen his eyes with surprise and perhaps a hint of alarm when he saw Shinjiro point the end of his evoker to his forehead.

The words swirled in Shinji’s mouth easily enough, his persona in no mood to fuss when it was about to be summoned for its first real fight in what seemed like ages. The problem was in threading the line of control, the constant balance of needs and wants of the immediate that did not/could not take precedent over the realization that he was mortal, that he could and very much would die if he didn’t dominate over his own soul. He needed to take control, be the puppeteer that ordered his persona, and not the other way around.

On one end of the tightrope there was a powerful shadow on the loose, Akihiko was in danger and he was the only one around that could possibly take it down. On the other end was the grip on his mortality, on who he was: he was mortal and he could die and had to be ready to face this fact. Fight, not flight. “ _Persona_!”

The feeling was indescribable, having Castor spring out into the night with the familiar sound of the evoker breaking through the confinements of his soul, releasing his persona into the world as it immediately roared into the heavens. Castor jumped high and stomped hard on the shadow as it screeched, flailing its arms in every possible direction. From its sides it birthed out a stray shadow that it easily smacked out of the way and ever so slightly Shinjiro felt his self-restraint slip away. He could do this, he could take on everything!

A piercing cough made him stumble forwards, hands gripping his chest to rip out more space for his lungs to fit in. In response, Castor turned to look at him, but disappeared before it could do anything. Akihiko was none the wiser and took a couple of coughs of his own before palming Shinjiro’s shoulder. “It must feel weird doing it after so long.” There was a faint smile on his lips, but his happiness was immeasurable and sorely unneeded at the moment.

He cast him a glare. From the corner of his eye the stray shadows were converging into the bigger one and it was regaining its previous form. “You ok?” Akihiko nodded, but still got up with effort before mentioning for Shinjiro to do the same. “We can’t do this by ourselves.”

He thought Aki would argue, but he just clicked his tongue in annoyance. “The dorm is close by – we have no choice. C’mon!” Though pale and limping, he started his run in the opposite direction of the shadow and Shinjiro followed him not too far behind, wincing at the sight of his friend trying his best to keep pace while fisting his vest right over the left side of his ribcage.

The shadow started its chase. Were they really going into the dorm unannounced? “Talk to Mitsuru you idiot!”

He reminded himself that Akihiko probably had a concussion and was therefore in no right state of mind to go through the motions of common decency of giving Kirijo a heads up before bringing guests over to the house. Still, Akihiko was grinning like an idiot and it wasn’t hard to recognize the utter enjoyment in his voice, just as it wasn’t hard to recon the reason as to why. He reached to his ear and clicked the small device there to life: “You’re not gonna believe this...! This thing is huge!” Shinjiro mentally face palmed. “Unfortunately I don’t have time to talk – it’s chasing me, I wanted to let you guys know. I’m almost there.”

Even from a distance Shinjiro could hear a very feminine screech from the other side of the comm, so definitely not Kirijo. He wanted to ask who it was, connected the dots and imagined the girl of scarlet eyes fretting over her possible first encounter with a shadow.

Not wanting the thing to smash head first into the dorm’s doors, Shinjiro aimed Akihiko’s evoker to his head again and screamed when Castor came out feral, yanking on the chains that usually tied it down. Akihiko stopped too, wincing and further clenching his fist, and stared at the massive persona that gutturally growled before launching an attack and disappearing again. The shadow disintegrated into Cowardly Mayas, who soon after started to converge again.

“What are you waiting for? Go!” Shinji screamed, face wincing with effort.

“You kidding me?” Despite his pain, Aki lowered his knees and raised his arms to fight. “I’ve been waiting for this!”

“You fucking-” Exasperation was his middle name whenever Akihiko was involved. Aggravated, he grabbed him by the shirt of his arm and pulled him the rest of the way, recalling all the other times his friend brought him to the edge of a panic attack with his stupid bravado which he swore was turning his hair the same color.

He brought him up the dorm door and kicked open the thing before practically throwing him inside, closing it just as he heard footsteps rushing down the stairs. The muffled voices from the other side did nothing to quell his racing heart, much less the sound of Akihiko’s desperate gasps for breath and the way certain words were taking more out of him than they should have. Fuck, what if he had something broken, what if it was piercing a vital organ?

The shadow screamed, calling for his attention. Its body swelled and contorted, cracking its insides into an unidentifiable and grotesque shape before opening up and spitting out three of its minions. For a third time Shinjiro aimed the evoker and pulled the trigger, but this time Castor wasn’t as chained as before and Shinjiro’s own restraint was falling to pieces with every attack his persona dealt to the enemy. He was a hound with the scent of bloodlust up his nose and no matter how much he battered the shadow down the desire inside him grew to obstruct the need to protect Akihiko and instead he wished to inflict harm, to hurt, to maim, to _destroy_ -

“ **Dammit**!” His hands grabbed his head and he squeezed his eyes shut. Control was a fickle thing, more nuanced that he would’ve thought, and definitely not something he could force down. “Screw it.” He angrily said, and gulped down a pill.

The usual hyper-sensitivity of his senses came and passed just as Akihiko and Mitsuru came to join him outside – he was assaulted by Mitsuru’s perfume and surrounded by the uncomfortable sound of Akihiko’s bones twisting and threatening to break, both sending him into a different states of nausea. But the experience was, as always, mercifully brief, and by the time his friends stopped beside him his head was already drifting amidst a warm, peaceful sea of nothingness from which he had to concentrate in order to keep his head above water. His body was, for the time being, lulled.

“Watch it!” Akihiko yelled just as Mitsuru summoned Penthesilea. The shadows leaped towards them, more Cowardly Mayas, and she’d reacted just in time to block their advances by turning them into ice statues. It didn’t do much though, so Shinjiro called forth Castor to smash the shadow closest to him before having the evoker ripped from his hands as Akihiko summoned Polydeuces to take on the other. The fight was done in seconds, even with their mutual sharing of the evoker. Something didn’t feel right. “Wait…” Akihiko started.

“Where’s the big one!?” Shinjiro added, fervently looking around.

“ _What_?” There was frustration in Mitsuru’s tone, but underneath it ran panic. She reached for the communicator in her ear and spoke in a hurry. “Takeba, do you read me!?” The girl on the other side of the comm stuttered a response. “Be careful! There’s more than one enemy! The one we’re fighting isn’t the one Akihiko saw!”

There was a bang and a cracking sound coming from one of the tight alleyways right beside the dorm’s building, further unsettling Mitsuru. She dashed inside the dorm just as the sound of shattering glass echoed in the emptiness of the streets and Akihiko stepped to follow suit, abruptly stopping once he realized Shinjiro wasn’t behind him.

“ _Go_!” Shinjiro yelled. Akihiko threw him the evoker again and disappeared inside the dorm.

Shinjiro’s eyes fixated on the spot where the noise came from. He didn’t have time to dwell on what to do before a stray shadow clung to his back and clasped itself to his clothes. He pointed the evoker to his head. “Persona!” Castor landed beside him with the might of an earthquake, causing enough of a surprise that the shadow unlatched from Shinjiro’s body – he kicked it back and didn’t waste a second longer, ordering Castor to attack with a _Fatal End_ before the thing had a chance to recollect itself. Castor did so and then disappeared.

From up on the rooftop an evoker shattered through the air and the atmosphere turned was almost musical. Shinjiro blinked, unprepared for the impact of this feeling. Whomever it was, it wasn’t like anything he’d felt before, not like how Polydeuces was impactful or how Penthesilea was piercing. It soothed him.

But the melodic pulse didn’t last long. The warmth gave way to ash and the undertones of music were defaced into a very real, very dreadful wailing, one which pierced his ears and made him wince, as if something inside broke at the sound. Castor, however, perked up, curious, and the pounding on Shinjiro’s eardrums felt the same as if his persona was knocking against them, begging him to pay attention.

After the initial shock there was screaming followed by something being forcefully _ripped apart_. The stupor was knocked away from Shinjiro as a bead of sweat stung his eye closed. He palmed the sweat off of his forehead and forced Castor into clamming up but was ultimately ignored - Castor kept begging to jump high and bear witness to the carnage that it was sure was taking place on the rooftop. He told it to shove it, because whatever was happening up there, he didn’t want to take any part in it.

The sounds of absolute slaughter continued for a good minute, though it felt like a lifetime, further sending Shinji down a spiral of equal parts nausea and gratification, like a plebeian witnessing a gladiator fight. His persona went from feeling contempt at his refusal to being in awe at the mere idea of the spectacle and then to an eerie sense of admiration for that sole persona that was single-handedly, literally tearing to shreds the shadow that Castor had failed to defeat by its lonesome. There were fat beads of sweat rolling down Shinjiro’s neck and he was vexed as the anticipation pulled him in after every rip and tear that echoed into the night. When it seemed to be finished, the persona on the rooftop let out one final, ghastly wail, before dissolving into song, and then into nothing.

The air remained still for a moment, before everything returned to normal. Or, at least, as normal as it could – the battle was still ongoing up there, but he was fairly sure that the main menace had been dealt with. “Fuck...” He felt as if he’d run a mile and was finally getting his chance to breathe.

When Akihiko eventually came down to retrieve his evoker he airily told Shinji that they had just gained a new recruit. He was laughing, but it was the sort of laugh that one would let out of relief and not so much as a sign of a content state of mind. “She’s quite the fighter.” He was wincing and had trouble standing up, but he was weirdly proud, if not a bit displeased. “And she’s a junior too…” For someone like Akihiko, the pain of losing to someone was heavy in his heart, and to be protected by someone heavier still, but the embarrassment of losing to someone younger and therefore less experienced than him, someone whom he should be protecting and not protected by, was the heaviest of tolls. That he had to experience all three in one night must have felt crushing.

“I don’t care.” He lied. “Make her take your place while you’re down.” Aki’s face blanched at the thought and he was about to reply with something definitely stupid and heavy with macho ideals when something else crossed his mind. Of course, Shinjiro saw it coming. “I’m not coming back.”

“But-”

“Go rest.” He ordered him, angry, only now noticing the spots of blood that blended in with the red of his vest.

Akihiko pondered his options and came out with a very manipulative, very smartass way of beating around the bush. “Visit me while I’m down?”

Shinjiro groaned, but nodded. Akihiko had the eyes of a puppy and the earnestness of a child, but Shinji knew that his smooth brain was wrinkly enough for certain topics.

The Dark Hour was a long while from ending, but he’d rather take those chances and venture to his own home instead of staying and fighting the urge to tie Akihiko to his bed, trusting Mitsuru to take care of that instead. He didn’t care for the new recruit, worse even, he didn’t want to stay and meet the holder of such carnage. Worst of all, he wanted to leave the scene before Ikutsuki had the chance to come down for a chat as well, so he grumbled his goodbyes and left a grinning Akihiko in the middle of the street.

-

4/ 19 • Su, Evening

Panic got the better of him, so the suppressants lost their effect.

He was fresh out of pills. He’d taken the last one exactly eight hours ago and already Castor was rumbling awake from its nap, rested and reinvigorated. The desperation he felt was comparable only to the dread behind emergency sirens that warned of imminent natural disasters and the destruction it was wrecking on both his mind and body felt the same as the aftermath of an earthquake.

He’d been so sure that his suppressed soul could last him at least another eight hours or so, but his body became prickly and his hands were cursed with an itch that just wouldn’t leave him be and he realized that the estimation had been severely overestimated. Soon enough Chidori would come to meet him, as she always did whenever she got wind of his lack of suppressants. Their encounters were never serendipitous in nature – she met him whenever she sensed his persona, and she sensed his persona because he lacked the suppressants.

Appealing to Chidori’s sense of pity as an attempt to grab a fresh batch pro bono would never work. Instead, what would most likely happen was a figurative kick to his pride’s metaphorical groin for attempting a look that did not suit him in the least – and even if he found it in him to pull the face of a lost puppy he’d first have to jump the hurdle that was Chidori’s empathy, or lack thereof.

He walked with the purpose of reaching the back alley, fully intent on putting on his friendliest face towards the usual suspects in hopes of getting them to agree on a loan. He’d rather not owe favors, but mostly he’d rather not feel like shit.

There were other options, though, was what Shinjiro thought after suffering through his first stumble, hand splayed against the nearest of walls for leverage. It wasn’t as if it hadn’t crossed his mind to finally put on the shoes of the delinquent that everyone already saw him as and do his worst to whomever he felt like. With the Dark Hour as a trump card it would be easy to commit petty thievery and merely waltz his way inside a random store to sort through their register. Still, it felt vile to abuse everyone’s transmogrification for his own purposes. Assaulting a drug store wasn’t the same as kicking a juice machine and hoping for a can to pop out, it didn’t feel right.

Castor laughed.

He weighed the options. On the one hand, he was responsible for a person’s death, which already felt pretty criminal on its own. On the other hand, if he didn’t get the capital to fund his medication there could be more Ms. Amadas haunting his nightmares.

It said a lot about him that his immediate thoughts against the idea of robbing a store took place in the grounds of whether Akihiko would punch him in the face about it or not. And, for sure, Akihiko would be totally into kissing his face with his fists at any given opportunity, and for the most varied of reasons too, but thievery was on the top five of the pretty hefty list. Shinji was sure that there was still an indent on his cheekbone for that one time he stole a teddy bear for Miki, because Akihiko had him make sure he’d never forget the error of his ways, nor the disappointment in his face.

Akihiko would be furious to find out that in his time of need Shinjiro opted to turn to loan sharks and crime to sustain a budding drug addiction (that he definitely didn’t have) instead of relying on him. He didn’t care. Shinjiro could do without the guilt tripping from owing his friend money, as well as the barter for him to pay his dues by possibly moving into the dorm and live under their thumb for the foreseeable future.

Castor growled.

Shinjiro shook his head. He knew he was a morally bankrupt person and Aki was not in charge of his moral compass. Not at the moment anyway. To prove his point he eyed the teenage girl that walked in front of him – she was asking for trouble, dressed up in Gekkoukan High’s uniform on a Sunday evening without a care in the world, like there weren’t people in Iwatodai thirsting to punch the lights out of the privileged rich kids of Tatsumi Port Island for the crime of existing. Her wallet was visible through her skirt’s pocket, already on the cusp of falling to the ground. It would have been easy. It would have been too easy.

He couldn’t do it. On one of his shoulders rested Aki and on the same one stood Mitsuru, unevenly weighing him down. Great, his morality had at some point gained two judges and they both expected better of him.

His cussing startled the girl, who turned to give him a look. Against all survival instincts she stopped dead in her tracks, startling him into stopping too. Shinjiro had but a fraction of a second to think about the complications of being pepper sprayed in the face when he felt like he knew the girl from somewhere, recognized her blood colored eyes and auburn hair, with the roman numeral for twelve fashioned with silver hair pins on the left side of her head. _Wait_.

She blinked. “You feel familiar, somehow.” When he took too long to respond she took a step towards him. “Are you ok? You look, uh, unwell.”

It was a polite way of implying he looked like trash. “You’re one to talk.” Her demeanor was serene, though a closer inspection filled him in on some particularities: her uniform was scuffed and with a slight rip on one side of her skirt, her hair was tight in a bun yet messy from a lack of brushing, and her face, though seemingly healthy, had the marks of a person who hadn’t been eating properly. He would know.

It’s as if she saw through his scrutinizing glance. With a smile, she offered to indulge him instead of replying in kind – he knew this, because she definitely wasn’t lacking in material to mock him with. “I did just come out of the hospital. I could’ve waited for someone to pick me up, but I got bored, you know?” He didn’t, that was a stupid assumption to make. Also, what a stupid decision to make. “What about you?”

Was she actively trying to engage him in conversation? “What’s it to you?”

She shrugged. “I was…encouraged to be friendly with everyone I meet, sort of, and I’m new in this town! So...”

“You shouldn’t just-” He rubbed his temples. He wasn’t about to act as the mother of yet another person. One was already one too many. “Whatever.” He continued his path and walked past her. “Call your parents.”

“Funny.” There was a pause and though he tried to ignore her he could not ignore the steps that followed him. “It’s not that we met before, but I feel like I know you from somewhere.”

He groaned. She was cute and his type, but his thoughts were becoming difficult to organize, even worse to put into words, and he wasn’t in the mood to indulge ideas of a manic pixie dream girl in the making. “Not interested.”

He heard her sigh. The discussion should have ended there, before he got angry, before the short fuse he was already in shortened even further, but she still followed suit and didn’t show any signs of giving up. “It’s just…” She started again “It feels like you’re close to dying.”

Shinjiro stopped. Took in a breath through his teeth and turned to her. She was further away from him now, though her voice seemed to have been right by his ear just a second ago. Had she even talked? “What d’you just say?”

Their path had somehow led them to Iwatodai dormitory, whose entrance steps she was now standing in front of. She took a moment of pause before answering with a doleful smile. “I’m sorry. That was a pretty thoughtless thing to say.” The lights of the dorm were still on and their yellow tint, shining through the translucent glass doors of the entrance, glinted prettily against her hairpins as she slightly turned to look inside. “This is my stop.” She lightly bowed. “Goodnight.”

_‘Was it her?’_ was what Castor seemed to be agitatedly asking, _eager_ – but it couldn’t have, because Castor was either cryptic poetry or murderous rage. And it couldn’t have been her, he refused to believe that last week’s unintelligible carnage had an owner.

But before he had the chance to ask, she went inside. He chose not to follow.


	3. That Hospital Visit

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for drug use and light instances of bodily harm.

4/ 20 • M, Dawn

“I don’t have the money.”

“Then you don’t get the goods.” Chidori made no movement but he felt it in her tone, saw the way her brow slightly arched. “Unless you’re willing to do us some favors.”

Shinjiro thought about it. Although he’d already made his statement clear, Chidori always seemed to bring it up out of obligation to the cause, more so than an actual bartering attempt. In truth, he wanted nothing to do with what activities the shirtless guy with the messiah complex was scheming – Shinjiro thought of himself as a good judge of character and Jin and Takaya were definitely the sort that he’d eventually regret ever becoming affiliated with. Chidori walked a flimsy line, but he found he couldn’t quite give her the same stink eye he’d reserved for her two compadres. She was easier on the ears, for one: Jin sounded like the brat he was and Takaya literally hissed his ‘s’s.

Chidori sighed almost inaudibly, something in her composed demeanor slipping between the cracks. She stepped away from the alley wall with grace and approached him as he slumped against the wall nearest to him, his fingers grasping at the fabric around his neck, before she yanked him down to her eye level by his sweater. “I do not do this because I reserve you pity. I do not do this because I value your life. However, I do this because you are an outsider with an outsider perspective that I’m sure will come into play way down the line, as well as a benefactor to our cause, even if you're not affiliated with it.”

She ripped his hand from his neck and placed a seemingly full pill bottle in it.

“These will have to last you until next month, understand?”

He groaned. “That won’t do.”

She blinked, something simmering beyond her glare. “I don’t care. You are ingesting too many of them, either way.”

It dawned on him again, like many times before, that none of what he was taking was ever explained to him. He’d never felt the need to ask and Chidori had always imposed that however they were managing his supply the details weren’t for him to know. He was aware that she and the others did not take in the same quantities as he did, which raised red flags on its own – he remembered that first night the four of them had met, after he'd downed an almost full bottle in four days; how they'd looked at him with a mixture of interest and utter dumbfoundedness.

It came down to logistics, mostly, how unfathomable it was that they could keep him juiced up and provide for themselves at the same time. Even if not the same as the last fourth of October, it seemed he was taking pills by the handful while his providers were not.

“How…” He cleared his throat “…How many do you take?”

Her reply came swift, trained. “None of your business.”

“Figures.” He took one out of the bottle and into his mouth, unwittingly chewing on the raw flavor of chemicals as some residue was left behind.

But Chidori stayed there. She looked at him, her eyes following the movements of his throat as he struggled to swallow the powder left in it. He was about to ask if she wanted a picture, when she finally added. “I usually take a pill every three to four days.”

He choked on his own spit and ungracefully coughed out a sentence. “You’re shittin’ me.” He’d been taking one every day at the very _least_!

“Barbaric.” She commented, watching him splutter and cuss. “I’ll be expecting full payment for at least one and a half doses – you can carry the other fourth of this debt until you find proper capital, but if I don’t receive your dues in time, we will do with you as we please.”

“Sure.” He’d wanted to test that threat for what it was worth, but thought better when reminded that even Castor, a persona with virtually no weaknesses, would be in dire straits if ganged up by three other persona users.

-

5/ 1 • F, Afternoon

Keeping tabs on Akihiko wasn’t difficult, even if Shinjiro wasn’t physically available to mother him as usual. Word on the street traveled fast and if your name was Akihiko Sanada, Gekkoukan High’s heartthrob, it seemed you’d be on the tip of the tongue of every female high schooler around Port Island. The girls around the back alley seemed to have a particular fascination with him, the same way he’d only ever heard from weird old creeps, as they loudly shared between themselves how they thirsted to shred away his innocence and see him at his most… as he once heard one say…‘primal’.

Gross.

So when word caught his ear that Akihiko Dreamboat Sanada wasn’t available to gawk at on after school hours because he had physical exams to see through at Tatsumi Memorial Hospital… he thought he might as well save himself the headache and actually check if he was alright. Not that he cared or anything.

At the hospital, the doctor had graciously allowed him to sit through the checkup without a word. Shinji took note of how the doctor neither asked him nor Akihiko anything out of the ordinary, nor made curious assumptions on what the cause of his injuries were – his lips were tight, his movements methodical and Shinjiro knew then and there that at least a handful of this hospital’s staff were under Kirijo payroll. But Mitsuru had kept her promise of leaving him alone, so even though Shinjiro caught a glance or two coming his way, he was spared any and all interrogations.

Akihiko seemed unaware. He was, overall, happy enough that his friend had kept his promise to visit, that alone having turned what he’d declared had been a very frustrating week into a very frustrating week but now with a very nice bow on top. “Because of your injuries?” Shinji asked once the doctor left.

“Hm? Not really. I mean, kind of.” _Kind of_ was pushing it – his ribcage was a canvas of purple and yellow. With each stretch of his left arm Akihiko sucked in a sharp breath, though he tried to disguise it, so trying to put on his clothes seemed a chore to do as much as it was to watch, very lethargic and very unlike Aki.

Though angry at his friend for being reckless, he was also angry at himself for the most varied of reasons: for not being there at the moment of the hit was one thing, for not being the one to take the hit was another, but he was also angry that he’d made the rational decision to actively move his ass and come see his bullheaded friend at the hospital, even while fully expecting his injuries to look like a burnt, vegetable omelet.

He’d made it his ultimate life mission to leave Akihiko to his own devices – he was strong, he could take care of himself – and yet here he was, checking up on his child. “What’s on your mind?” He asked as he leaned against the hospital bed, trying to ignore the way Akihiko tried and failed and tried again to properly tie that stupid string on his neck. He would not – _would **not**_ – volunteer to do it for him.

Akihiko let out a dry laugh. “The question is what’s _not_ on my mind. I’m up to my neck on thinking Shinji – any more inaction and I’ll start climbing up the walls.”

“Ah. I see.”

“Mitsuru has me on a tight leash – I can’t even step foot on boxing practice.”

“How terrible.” His teenaged child always loved melodrama.

Akihiko gave him a look as he cleaned his vest of wrinkles and moved on to putting his gloves. “We’ve…they’ve been going to Tartarus.”

That caught his interest. “You got new recruits _and_ you’re already testing them on Tartarus.” Shinjiro had never stepped into Tartarus beyond its fourth floor and that was an experience in and of itself that he’d rather not repeat.

Akihiko did a thing where he half shook his head and half nodded, coming out as more of a shrug. “Mitsuru wanted to gauge their potential. They’re three juniors, each with a different enough set of skills to balance each other out.” Back then, the prevailing theory towards a successful Tartarus raid had them requiring and ideal team of no less than three people (large enough to fill in for each other’s weaknesses yet small enough to adequately maneuver the sometimes tight corridors), plus another agent on the ground floor to deal with reconnaissance of both the enemies and possible exits. “They’d learn the ropes, fight shadows and get a feel for the evokers.”

“All under Kirijo’s ever watchful eye.” Shinji shook his head. “Do they know?”

Akihiko fisted both of his gloved hands before him and didn’t bother to look up as he whispered “No.”

“That’s fucked up.”

“It’s not on us to disclose that kind of information.” He looked almost sure of himself, as if he’d mulled on this many times before. “I trust Mitsuru’s judgement.”

Shinjiro hummed. He didn’t like it, never did enjoy his time fighting shadows under Kirijo’s thumb until she opened up to her intentions. A working machine would only ever be well maintained if everyone spun under the same truth and so his time in SEES wasn’t marked by his patience with a lot of things; though he at least sucked it up because of Akihiko and the immediate need to keep him safe. It wasn’t until a year into their nightly ventures that Mitsuru came clean and while he initially seethed at her lack of honesty, even more so when the subject was the reason why they were fighting shadows in the first place, he learned to get over it because he understood. Mitsuru was a lot of things, but most of all she was suffering, a teenager struggling to look composed while hoisting the wrongdoings of a generation on her shoulders.

That didn’t mean he had to like it. In keeping up the charade, Aki and Mitsuru were fooling no one but themselves.

But he shook his head – this wasn’t his problem to deal with.

Beside him Akihiko also leaned on the bed. There was a crease between his eyebrows and his jaw kept clenching and unclenching. Some part of him knew Akihiko was roping him into engaging in conversation, using his palpable worry as a rope to keep him tied to the spot, but the other part of him laughed at the idea of Akihiko being an emotional evil genius, even though sometimes it was hard to tell. Shinjiro kept his wits to himself and made a point to shift in place, nudging his friend back from his thoughts.

Finally, Akihiko continued. “We sent in the juniors to practice, but they ended up clearing more floors than we expected.”

“How many?”

“Fifteen. We’ve actually reached a dead end.”

Shinjiro raised a brow.

“There’s more beyond, of course, but for now we can’t keep forcing our way up.” In Akihiko’s face there was a mixture of apprehension and excitement. “This one recruit... She’s incredible. We made her leader for one night and she- she just wrecked shop! Always with a no-nonsense plan, it was uncanny, like she was born for it.” On Akihiko’s lips was half a nervous smile. His fingers kept twitching until they found solace on his crossed arms. “We planned on rotating team leaders, to see how they fared under pressure, but she fit the role as naturally as a glove. That was ten days ago. _Ten days ago_. And in ten days we’ve covered more ground than the entire Kirijo group did in ten _years_. Did you know different sections of Tartarus have guardians? Junpei calls them mini-bosses – Mitsuru can’t even identify their weaknesses. It’s crazy.”

There wasn’t much more Shinjiro could do besides silently mull over the situation. So there were three new recruits, with one of them being the jackpot SEES had sorely needed ever since its conception. Every thought that ghosted through his mouth was a variation on how the situation was unconvincing in its vanilla state, a far-fetched turn of events too incredible for it to have come to be by mere happenstance. He thought of the girl with the red eyes and her backasswards comments on his state of affairs – she was part of the team, he suspected, so was she said miraculous leader? If anything, his suspicions only grew.

Akihiko straightened up. “That’s right, Junpei. I asked him to bring me something today.” He took out his flip phone to check the time. “He’s one of the new recruits.” He closed the phone and took note of how silent Shinji was. Perhaps he thought of it as an invitation to keep the conversation going, an opening from which to probe at his soft spots even further. Again, Shinji tried to convince himself, Akihiko wasn’t Machiavellian in nature and everything he did and said was transparent and lovingly…sometimes painfully, honest. “Shinji”, he started.

“I’m not coming back.”

It was starting to become funny, because even after all this time Akihiko still sounded lightly offended, as if this wasn’t a dance they’ve done many times before. In response, Aki murmured some unintelligible nonsense under his breath and probably pondered giving him five across the back before reminding himself that it was neither the right place nor the right time. “Well, you’ve kept your promise. Was beginning to think you wouldn’t come see me.” He smiled. “Thanks.”

Shinji was _not_ going to smile. “Tch.” Instead, he was about to answer with a well-aimed smack to the back of Aki's neck when loud banter echoed on the corridor beyond them. Akihiko got up and moved to grab his jacket, neatly draped over a nearby chair, when the door swung open, making way for a loud bunch that instantly ceased talking as soon as Shinji entered their frame of view.

Shinjiro squinted at the front runner, a tall guy with a blue baseball cap that he was certain he’d seen somewhere before. Probably the one named ‘Junpei’. Behind him were two girls, one of which clearly caught his attention more so than the other. The mood quickly turned uncomfortable when Shinjiro made no attempt at a greeting and so Junpei’s next words came out shaky as a result. “Umm… Is… Akihiko-senpai…?” His voice wavered. “...in this room? By any chance?”

Akihiko stepped from behind the open door, jacket already perched on his fingers, hanging loosely over his shoulder. “What are all of you guys doing here?”

Despite the tense looks Shinjiro kept exchanging with her, the girl with the red eyes was the one to answer. “We came to see you.”

Aki was none the wiser. “I’m just here for a checkup.” He smiled. Shinji reminded himself that none of this was his business anymore, so he shouldn’t feel bad for the fresh meat of SEES being thrown out at the wolves of Tartarus. They’d deal with that in their own time.

The place was crowded enough for him to go. “Is that it, Aki?”

“Yeah” Akihiko answered. And because Akihiko was a wholesome guy with a penchant for the most honest of retorts, he added a good “Thanks” to hammer in just how meaningful it meant to have Shinjiro check up on him, despite their previous scuffles.

It slightly pissed him off. “Tch… I don’t have time for this shit.” He said, more as a reminder to himself. He got up without fanfare and made his way towards the door, aware of how the others made extra room for him to pass through. But on his way out he stopped short of the exit and made it a point to look at the girl directly in the eyes. “You…” Though Castor was hidden beneath layers of metaphorical concrete, he still felt it stir at the sight of her – he didn’t know if it was out of curiosity or a desire to angrily sneer at the way she’d kept him awake with her comment on his mortality, but he feared it was a bit of both. He clicked his tongue. “Never mind.” Castor was a poetic asshole with a penchant for the macabre and indulging it was the least of his desires.

The girl had the gall to let slip the slightest of nods, seemingly disappointed.

“ _Wh-Who was that_?” He heard Junpei ask once Shinjiro closed the door behind him. He didn’t stick around to hear the rest, not when his head was filled with Akihiko’s honest smiles, convoluted SEES shenanigans and a very vague take on ‘girl problems’.

He was in a bad mood. Everything in that hospital room left him in a bad mood. The need to let out steam boiled under his skin the same way it usually did, starting with that particular itch on the back of his neck and hands that never seemed to disappear until he dealt it away with some unrestrained violence. When no one was looking he slipped through the emergency stairs and made his way out of the building, jumping two to three steps along the way.

Outside the air was warm and pleasant, but he felt anything but. His hands were clammy even though his body was unusually cold, colder than it should be at the ends of springtime. In the wake of his suppressed soul there was a storm brewing inside his head, though devoid of the usual philosophical rubbish, but littered instead with debris of cut off words and angry snarls. Sometimes, all it took for Castor to trigger were the slightest of things.

Someone poked his shoulder, catching him off guard. “What?” He grunted at the nurse beside him, not in the right frame of mind to be civil. He was in the typical green getup he saw other nurses wear, the only distinct thing about him being his unruly mop of blonde hair.

The nurse stood unshaken, probably used to dealing with sourpusses like him. He took one good look at Shinjiro and fished out a pack of smokes from his back pocket, with only then Shinjiro realizing that the man already had a lit one in his mouth. “You seem like you need one.”

Shinji laughed at the profiling of his character more so than the irony of the situation. “I thought medical professionals discouraged this shit.”

The guy laughed and then shrugged. “Ah who cares. At least I get to choose how I die.” He shook the pack in front of him.

It was an interesting way to put things, stalling Shinjiro enough for the moment to edge on the uncomfortable. When it seemed like the man was going to retract his hand Shinji impulsively took one out and held it semi comfortable between his fingers. He spared the man a glance as he fished for his lighter. “Won’t it get on your scrubs?”

“Just done with my shift." The nurse lit the cigarette that was already in Shinjiro’s mouth.

The first drag took him years back, before his mistakes were as weighty as they’d one day become. Since it was his first in a while the smoke hit different, burnt up his nose a bit more than he remembered and made him exhale somewhat quickly due to lack of practice. Smoking was another thing on the list of Akihiko’s moral ideals that had once excused a punch to Shinji’s jaw. Remembering that day, Shinjiro took a weighty drag and felt his head lose a bit of balance. What Aki didn’t know wouldn’t (literally) hurt him and it wasn’t as if Shinji cared about his body either way.

“They say you can tell a lot about a person by how they hold their smokes.” The nurse told him, pointing at the way Shinji held his between his thumb and his pointer finger, as if trying to hide it from view with his other fingers.

“What, you about to read my fortune?” The puff of tobacco reminded him of how both enjoyable and unpleasant it was to have his throat fill up with acrid smoke. He’d once been a rebellious middle schooler trying everything he could get his hands on, anything that could make him feel something other than anger. That was when he still hadn’t awakened Castor, but he guessed the saying was true, that some things never change. He took another swig. “What d’yours say?”

The man chuckled; he held his smoke between his middle and ring fingers. “That I’m a fancy bitch.”

Despite himself he couldn’t hold in the smirk – the adults around him were just so wise. He took a drag and stared at the burning paper of the cigarette for a moment, pinpointing the fuzzy feeling inside him that demanded his immediate attention: tobacco was a drug like many others, made to ease his mind, just like the pills he received from Chidori were meant to ease his soul. His primitive brain joined the dots that stupidly spun this narrative and he clicked his tongue in displeasure at the idea before giving it some more thought.

In the end he took one last sizeable drag before offering what was left back to the nurse, who’d already finished his off and was fishing out for another. His action gained him a raised brow. “Not enough for you?” He chuckled, which should have been a cryptic enough thing to say for Shinjiro to book it, but instead he replied with a raised brow of his own. “Got some fiercer stuff if you want.”

He glared at him. “What makes you think I want your _stuff_?”

“Don’t give me that look man. I’ve seen you around the alleys – you and those creepy dudes, with the one that walks around half naked all the time.” _Shit_. “Everyone knows they’re into some shady shit so no one messes with them, but I’ve heard that you and the red haired miss sometimes trade beans.”

The smoke he'd inhaled did nothing to tame the growing exasperation in his chest. He grimaced, realizing just how much his reputation exceeded his mere appearance, remembered the doctor in Aki’s room and the handful of Kirijo employees who could be looking at this exchange. He forced himself to stare forward. “They ain’t beans and you better keep your mouth shut.”

The guy smiled wryly, knowingly, twisting the bottom of Shinjiro’s stomach. “That comes with the job.” He finished off Shinjiro's cigarette before stepping on it. “In case you’re curious.” He exhaled. “Me and the boys r’ gonna meet at the usual place. You’re a smart guy, I trust you know where it is.”

He did. And it said a lot about him that he did.

-

?/ ? • ?, Night

He regretted this. He regretted this. **He** **regretted** **this**.

Words could not describe how much he regretted everything – words he knew he possessed yet couldn’t spill over the cramped lexicon of his drugged up brain. Thoughts swirled around his head and beyond his eyes and almost coherently poured out from between his teeth but he could only vocalize them in a gargled sob, miles below his actual excruciating need to shout everything out of his lungs. But though he tried, there was nothing there to let out. He opened his mouth and held it like so for a scream that never came nor would ever come.

(He shouldn’t have gone to that place. He shouldn’t have met with those guys. He shouldn’t have tried their _stuff_.)

His ceiling was a mirage made of needles and his surroundings were filled with worn furniture from the old orphanage ( _the one that burned down, the one that took everything away_ ). All of it was fake because he understood the contours of his small apartment the same way he understood the back of his hands, which wasn’t saying a lot because much like a dream his hands were shifting and constantly changing shape, elongated in one blink and missing fingers after another, his skin gruesome and purple and scalding, bubbling at the surface. The longer he stared the longer the epidermis peeled away to reveal the rotten flesh beneath and the more he tried to hold it together the more it seemed to melt beneath his palms, showing off the bones that poked out, twisted.

Again, he attempted a scream, but nothing came out. Maybe because millions of insects were crawling around his airway, prickling the flesh inside his throat and gnawing him into a bloody mess from the inside out. Enraged, he clawed at his own throat to try and peel them away, but only managed to hurt himself when one of his nails sunk too deep and flayed a bit of his skin off.

The pain sobered him up for a moment – there were no insects prickling his throat numb but in their place was the afterimage of Castor with its hands tight on their most preferred place as it loomed above him with shaky red irises and a mane of wild, blonde hair swirling atop its head, as if it was caught in a whirlwind of cataclysmic proportions.

Castor’s words were beyond unclear, they were _unfocused_. Nothing that came out of its skeletal mouth made sense, sounding more like discombobulated grunts of pain from an animal on the verge of a very painful death.

Shinjiro tried to force Castor away with a pill but Castor refused to move away entirely, instead moving to grab at Shinjiro’s temples and squeezing hard, as if trying his best to not get swept away by an invisible current. The pressure was so intense that he had to swallow bile, only to end up running towards the small basin at the corner to barf the meager contents out of his stomach and, finally, the walls around him started taking on a more normal appearance, even if his reflection on the mirror was anything but.

‘ _What time is it_?’ Beyond his lonely window the sky was as dark as could be, but there was no way to know if the Dark Hour had already passed, or worse, if it was yet to come.

He had no way to know. No matter how much he stared at his pocket watch he couldn’t read what it was saying. Castor’s hands were again finding solace on his neck, belatedly reminding him that he probably puked out the last suppressant he'd swallowed down the drain. If he could, he would probably wail in pain.

But he needed to regain composure. If he lost it now – **fuck** , if he lost it during the Dark Hour!

It all felt so real. There was **_blood_** covering the walls and no matter how much he smudged it with his hands _it kept running down to the ground and towards his feet and_ **_encompassing him whole_** beneath its murky color and pungent smell. He blinked and the **_blood_** was gone, and then he blinked again and the **_blood_** was now mud clamoring to **suffocate** him beneath the ground. There were **shadows that weren’t shadows** grabbing at his hands to yank him down further so that he could at least finally _BE OF USE_ and fertilize the soil, so that other, less rotten plants could grow in his stead.

It felt way too real when one of the shadows with the shape of a small boy of brown hair looked at him with sorrow and pain, exasperated but not surprised at his failure, and suddenly he was at Tatsumi Port Station, horrified by the flashes of Castor coming in and out of view, its violent nature warring against every innocent person in the vicinity, painting the streets a lurid CRIMSON, _so wild and bright that the moon shone green no more and then didn’t shine at all as the BODIES kept pilling and pilling on top of each other_ **_and obfuscated every LAST bit of light in his life_**.

With what remained of his strength he poised himself above the basin and pondered for the bare minimum of seconds before taking his fingers into his mouth.

-

At the threshold of sleep he said to himself: “I feel like nothing.” A state of being that he felt would accompany him throughout his foreseeable future.

-

?/ ? • ?, Morning

The morning after the drug fiasco he woke up with a pounding on his head and another at his door. What followed was a one sided exchange of words in which the landlord did most of the yelling, going on about how loud he’d been that night and how he should keep his shady deeds to himself if he wanted to keep a roof over his head. Shinji nodded and kept quiet, but perhaps there was something with his face, or maybe he’d been born this way, because the landlord quickly changed his mind and threw him out on the spot. Perhaps, Shinjiro later soberly thought, in between the myriad of words he threw at him there had been an explanation and it probably had to do with how much of a bad rep he was giving the place. Whatever the case he hadn’t been able to decipher much, too focused on just how much spit the man let fly with each sputtering sentence.

He’d then fallen asleep and woken up against the corner of a lifeless alley and just like that he was homeless again. Not enough time had passed for him to forget what life in the streets had felt like: the perfect blend of self-degradation and ‘get the fuck away from me’ aura that stuck to his skin like splinters. So, everything he’d wished for it to be.

It hadn’t all been for naught, was what he consoled himself with, because he hadn’t taken a pill ever since. On the other hand both his inner clock and the one he kept on a breast pocket inside his jacket were out of it and Shinjiro was finding it increasingly difficult to care. Whenever he felt tired he slept. If he was hungry he’d eat. For a few days his inner workings functioned on primal needs alone. He sometimes felt the need to compare it to the orphanage, but even that hellhole of a place had more finesse that whatever piss stained alley he’d chosen for a bed on any given night.

It was in this state of mind that he came across a group of random thugs harassing the merch of a local vendor, asking for trouble in the most blatant of ways as they slashed at the bags of sugar, salt and whatever else was inside the small van parked on the only parking lot of the alleys of Port Island. “Hey.” He casually called for them. “Knock it off.”

It didn’t take much for the group to take offence. There were five of them, all repugnant with the scent of yesterday’s alcohol and bumbling the same nonsense Shinjiro’s heard a million times before, like ‘ _who do you think you are_ ’ and ‘ _check this guy_ ’. He threw the first punch – confuse the enemy, show them who’s in charge of the beat they’re dancing to – immediately knocking a guy out cold and riling up the rest of the squad into sloppy fighting stances. The second one whose face met the pavement was the one who yelled ‘ _you’re dead meat_ ’ because Shinjiro had decided that he wouldn’t take too kindly to people insinuating his state of mortality anymore; at least not this early in the day. The sun had barely just come up in the horizon and he’d always been a cranky fuck in the mornings.

By the end of it he’d taken more blows than he’d been counting on, even though he had the experience and the apparent sobriety to boot. In retrospect it was inevitable, what with his messed up sleeping schedule and bare minimum intake of food. His left eye was sore and the upper right corner of his lip was busted, there were scratch marks on his hands and a nasty cut on his right arm of when he’d failed to account that one of them clearly had to have had a knife to be cutting the bags in the first place. His fists were raw too, but maybe they’d always been.

Shinjiro walked away with wobbly feet, leaving the carnage behind, but not too far ahead his legs gave out from under him and he barely avoided falling face first by leaning against a nearby wall. He let his whole body sway against it, back first, then slide to the ground. Though the sun was still high he allowed his eyes to close for a second too long, but the nightmares never gave him much rest and he soon woke up from his impromptu slumber.

And then something very soft and very warm shifted on top of his legs and let out a cute little sneeze. He choked out a tired gasp at the sight of the dog cuddling up in his lap, not quite sleeping, yet not quite awake either. Shinjiro carefully removed his hand from beneath the adorable mound of fluff and tenderly petted its back, with a carefulness he had only ever unrelentingly reserved for that one small street cat that would hiss and threaten to smack him if he dared pet it the wrong way.

The dog was grey and white, with two small dots of dark grey above its eyes, like eyebrows. It lacked a collar, which surprised him because of how well-groomed it was. Perhaps it ran away – in which case Shinjiro felt the ridiculous pull of empathy for an animal he didn’t know anything about, except for the fact that it had deemed his lap snug enough to lay down and nap and that had to count for something, right?

Eventually the dog raised its head the same way all good dogs did when they heard something in the distance. It blinked its striking red eyes before excitedly giving Shinji a giant lick across the nose, then getting up and wagging its tail as Shinjiro laughed and rubbed the wetness away. Something prickled at his eyes at the sound of his own laughter, a notion so foreign to him that it felt illegal, and he was left unsure at what he was really rubbing off with the back of his hands.

He didn’t dawdle on it for long because a voice cut through the silence: “You ok?” A bit too furiously Shinjiro rubbed the last of the wetness away and hurried up to his feet. The man who spoke raised his hands in mock surrender, clearly not in the mood to engage in confrontation. “Hey it’s cool – you're just, huh, awfully purple, is all.”

“Got it from my mother.” He answered without thinking as the dog pawed at his leg, but then he touched his throbbing eye and flinched at the feel of swollen skin. So out of it was he that Shinjiro didn’t move away when the other man leaned down to pet the dog. Instead, he took the opportunity to look at him – he was a man of maybe forty in age, with a short beard and black hair swiped neatly to the right. His shoes were shiny and his black pants were neatly ironed; he wore a light blue, pristine shirt rolled up at the sleeves, with a black tattoo peeking from beneath.

“Hey, this yours?” The man asked, picking something off the ground. “Nice.” He twiddled the pocket watch in his hands. “Is it one of those wind up ones?”

Shinjiro didn’t answer for a moment. In the pits of his stomach rested the type of possessiveness that he had yet to learn how to surpass, the type that he had to wholly redirect, body and mind, whenever it told him to hide things under the bed unless he wanted the other kids to steal. He fought the urge to urgently snatch back the watch and decided instead to play it cool. “Yes.” Inside his head Castor was thrashing about, ordering him to take back what was rightfully his. He ignored him. “It’s mechanical.”

The man nodded, lips slightly pursed. “Cool.” He turned the watch around in his hands once, twice, then finally handed it over to Shinjiro as he got up. Despite Shinjiro’s impressive height, the man stood a bit taller than him, reminding him that he was still just a kid hiding behind a hat. “Hey – that scenery back there, was it you?”

Shinjiro narrowed his eyes. “What’s it to you?”

The man made a point to glance away from him and towards the duffel bag behind him, the one obviously carrying Shinjiro’s meager belongings, before returning to Shinjiro once again.

Shinjiro spat on the ground a mixture of blood and saliva. “I got no money on me.” His fists tightened by his sides. “And I ain’t easy prey either.”

The man laughed before folding his arms. His laugh was so abrupt that even the dog beside them looked surprised. He looked at Shinji straight in the eye. “How 'bout I offer you a job?”

“…huh?”

“You heard me. You come work at my bar and clean some dishes and whatever and when the times call for it I’ll pay you extra to, you know, _look tough_.” At Shinjiro’s distrustful face the man continued. “You can take one of the spare rooms at the joint rent free as long as you keep an eye out for intruders and keep the space clean. I’d say that’s quite the deal.”

Shinjiro squinted his eyes further. “What’s the catch?”

“The catch is that I’ve seen you around the slums – punks seem to know not to get involved with you and, wouldn’t you know, that’s just the kind of employee I need.” He extended a hand. “You can call me Tomio. So, what do you say?”

He wasn't sure if he answered out of necessity or out of his pure need for thrills, because ‘looking tough’ and all that that statement entailed seemed just like his thing. “Sure.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> On the next chapter – Shinjiro and Kotone actually hold a conversation!


	4. Conversations at Food Joints and Investigations at the Alleys

5/ 16 • Sa, Dawn

“Good work today.” Repeated Tomio for a second time, unfazed by Shinjiro’s lack of excitement.

Shinjiro muttered a “Sure”, pondering if his boss would call him out on his ‘good work’ for a third time but also unenthusiastic about finding out.

His eyes roamed over the Mahjong Bar, with its dark green tiled floors and glossy mahogany tables, darkened with age, and felt pleased enough with its overall cleanliness to call it quits. On his way to the supply closet he stopped at the bar counter and gave one lass wipe with a cleaning cloth before packing it all in for closing time. One of his job requirements had him prohibited from carrying a watch of any kind and his inner clock was haywire due to his unkempt schedule, but he reasoned it to be close to five in the morning.

Boss Tomio sat down on his usual spot at the counter, flipping through wads of cash with his perfectly manicured hands, ecstatic at the night’s phenomenal spoils. With each motion of his fingers the more Shinjiro took awareness of his own hands, of how ugly they looked by comparison, with long calloused fingers and chipped nails, dry skin and patches of scarred flesh. He slowly hid them in his uniform’s pockets, or as much as one could call it a uniform: black pants and a white dress shirt, with his turtleneck beneath adding a bit of a personal touch.

After a set of agonizing minutes Tomio handed him his dues (just enough to pay Chidori), stashed the remaining money inside a black suitcase and got up, motioning for Shinjiro to follow before abruptly changing his mind. “You know what, it’ll be fine. Just close shop.” Shinjiro seemed unsure, to which his boss let out a small laugh. “Without that beanie of yours you come out as a really expressive kind of guy.”

He ignored that. “Y’ sure you don’t need me?”

“Yeah– you have no idea how smoother everything’s been ever since you started working here. All those wannabee punks and their funny business? Poof! Like smoke. Speaking of which,” he pulled a pack of cigarettes and took one for himself before offering one to Shinji, who refused, “I found a new guy, so in about a month you’ll get free weekends – as long as you’re here for closing, I don’t give a rat’s ass what you do with your time. Also, starting next week you’ll do waiter shifts only after midnight. I’m having a prettier face come over and serve the patrons on the busier hours.” He lit the cigarette with a Zippo, closing its lid on the fire with a _clang_. “But in the meantime, you’ll have to sit there and look like yourself for a couple of hours. Keep the mood clean, you know? Maybe sometimes do me some errands.”

“What kind of errands?”

“You always give me that look, like I’m into something shady.” Shinjiro crossed his arms but the man just laughed. “Just some things for the kitchen. Booze too – bet no one’ll ask for your ID either way.” He took a drag of his cigarette and exhaled towards the open window before flicking the thing out of it and picking up his suitcase again.

While leaving, Tomio waved his hand, silently walking down the stairs out of the bar, perfectly avoiding all the creaking steps that he surely knew by heart. Seconds later Shinjiro left the bar as well, making sure that every window was shut and every light turned off, closing the front door and locking it behind him. But instead of going down the stairs he veered towards the lonely door at the end of the small corridor, taking out a different set of keys and opening said door to his place.

Inside, the first room that greeted him was the small kitchen area, one that, unlike the one on his last apartment, he could call his own. Also of his own was a bathroom with a shower, as well as a small balcony peeking out from the main room, from which only one person could comfortably stand on. In two steps he made it to the main room, barren, save for a small, short legged table off to one of the sides. Though dreary at first glance, his accommodations were decorated in just the way he preferred: nice and spotless. There was no TV, no unnecessary cabinets and no decorations, just one wall clock missing a seconds pointer. The minimalism of it all gifted him a peace of mind.

Tired, Shinji grabbed out his futon from inside the sliding closet. He’d forgotten that his watch had been previously tossed inside before he left for work and grimaced when it jumped out and violently smacked against the floor. He quickly grabbed it and placed it back inside the closet, a bit more to the side. Its gears weren’t winded for the day since he hadn’t been with it by the time midnight passed, yet he didn’t have it in him to worry about setting the time straight.

Not one to sleep naked he set his futon down and changed into something warm, more comfortable, before laying down. Anything would’ve done fine for him to sleep in, but for some reason the nights were turning colder instead of warmer, unexpected for the weather of an approaching summer. He paid it no mind and settled in for a good rest, confident that he’d wake up at a right time without the need to even prepare an alarm…if he ever got to sleep at all.

In truth he hadn’t been sleeping as much as he should’ve, even though his head sometimes ached and the bruises under his eyes grew deeper with each sleepless night. Under the covers he tossed and turned and counted the seconds as if they were Cowardly Mayas jumping over a fence, but sleep seemed to be as reachable as the moon to the sun, so he eventually gave up. The first rays of sun peeked from beyond his curtains when he went through the motions of routine and after a quick shower he set out his futon on the balcony and pondered on how to spend his free time.

From beyond, Port Island’s Station grumbled with the arrival of another train and with it its morning commuters could be heard coming out to start their days. He wondered if all the workers and students had bentos, if they made it themselves or had loved ones prepare some for them. At the thought, he rummaged the fridge without really looking, then the cabinets, finally deciding on preparing a batch of white rice as a quick breakfast before…going for a walk or some shit. Whatever.

But, courtesy of his lack of a rice cooker, while the water was set to boil inside the scalding pot, Shinjiro stared at the already measured rice and decided to comb through his kitchen once more. He thought and mused and recognized that his schedule was very much open to any and all types of activity before working hours, so he dumped the already bubbling water onto the sink and started again.

First he took out the ingredients: half a cut onion, his last egg and one lonely tomato from the fridge, the latter an acquisition from the bar, from when his boss had deemed it unfit due to some small spots on its side. From the cabinet below he took out a pan and a bottle of cooking oil, also taken from his boss’s bar, with which he lightly greased the bottom of both. From the already scalding pot came flying out sizzling specs of oil onto his uncovered arms but he didn’t so much as flinch, too engaged in setting the two stove mouths at a medium high. He then quickly cut the onion into small pieces before throwing it inside the pot, again indifferent to the splatter zone.

Food had lost a lot of its flavor in the past months, was what he thought as he reached out for the salt and pepper flakes at their corner near the fridge. Sometimes his mouth felt numb to even the movements of his tongue and though he was sure he’d never bitten into it, it wasn’t uncommon for him to occasionally taste lead at the back of his throat. His mouth was more often than not dry and his lips chapped, no matter how much water he drank. Perhaps it was the first of the side-effects of the suppressants finally rearing their ugly head – though if lack of hydration and taste were the biggest of his problems then he’d live just fine.

He let the rice fry inside the pot for a few seconds as he peeled and cut the tomato into tiny pieces, before throwing it inside the pot as well. He squinted at the pot’s opening: “Should’ve put the rice after.” After lightly stirring he added water and made a game out of the seasonings, deciding on just how much salt and pepper to add by sight and smell alone. When the pan started to sizzle he cracked open the egg without thinking and scrunched up his nose, realizing that he now had to eat it fried instead of turning it into an omelet, as he’d intended. He then groaned when realizing that the egg would cook much faster than the rice – but next time – he’d remember that for next time too.

If he’d had more ingredients he’d probably add vegetables to the mix, some bell peppers or broccoli, or one of those silly sounding sour fruits that he read up on the discarded cooking magazines with which the boss’s bar had no actual use for. Maybe he could place it in the oven for extra crisp and flavor. Maybe he could try his hand at baking too. He hadn’t made use of his oven ever since he moved in and hey, he might as well have fun with the electric bill before inevitably getting kicked out again. Start small: he could try something simple first, a dry cake with cinnamon or dry fruits. Maybe both. How daring.

It dawned on him that the kitchen was probably the only place he’d ever allow himself to be experimental, since in all other facets of his day-to-day Shinjiro led himself with a tight hand that barely loosened over any sort of compromise between what he knew and what was new. Past…”experiences” had him pegged to strictness, so he kept a set routine of somewhat inconsequential things that, though trivial from an outsider’s perspective, lent him that added security: a shower every morning, a dosage of suppressants sometime close to midnight, rolling his shoulders before setting out to do something, feeding the strays at the shrine after lunch and winding his watch right after the Dark Hour.

Except…he barely carried his watch anymore. He looked back at the closet and pondered on what this meant. He stared at the question and didn’t like what it answered back, so he went to grab the watch and set its time straight, before returning to keep tabs on the stove.

The rice’s seasoning, as it happened, was perhaps a bit too heavy with the pepper. Nonetheless he ate with a vengeance, pleased with how it turned out, pleased _that he was pleased_ and wondering if he should have that right.

The thought was carried with him even as he heard the crack of window glass shatter at the bar next door, even as he got up to deal with the intruders.

-

5/ 19 • Tu, Evening

He’d forgotten that exam week was a thing.

There was an uncomfortable amount of students at Chagall Café, gossiping over open notebooks as they lay forgotten besides cups of Pheromone Coffee. Part of him didn’t care – he was a dropout and the idea that he needed to further his education just to get a shot at life left him cross and salty – but his other part pulled him towards admonishing everyone for being so nonchalant with their studies while simultaneously grating his nerves with how close they had their cups to those papers. The place was absolutely blooming with clientele, every table sporting more than just the coffee – cakes, juices, crepes…study time was mostly an excuse to fraternize.

It irked him most that, though late in the evening, the students were just as rowdy as during the day. Even though he sat at the furthest corner of the café trying his damndest to drown out the noise, he could feel every flirty giggle and lame joke edge him ever closer to a migraine. He’d spent so much of his time away from anything school related that it came as no surprise when he caught himself thinking to be the adult in a sea of children, even if he hadn’t himself reached the legal age of eighteen.

The table in front of him tortured him the most, where the topic veered from mathematical equations to romantic crushes to idealized scenarios wherein Akihiko Sanada would tutor each of the four girls there independently.

One of said girls let out a long-winded sigh. “Can you imagine it, the way he’d teach Algebra…”

Yes, the same way he studied it – with intermittent push-ups every five to ten minutes.

His mood was only partially appeased when Chagall’s owner herself came by his table to take up his order, making sure that he was indeed Tomio’s errand boy and not some random punk bringing about bad jujus to the place, what with how unfriendly his face must have looked. “I’ll send someone with the coffee bag in a minute.” She said, expression shifting from suspicious to pleased as he offered politeness in exchange.

But that minute ticked by slowly.

“There’s a girl breaking the Sanada golden rule though. You heard about her?”

“Who? Mitsuru-senpai?”

“You’re new to this aren’t you.”

“Hehe, yeah.”

“Mitsuru doesn’t count! She’s on a league of her own.”

“Then who?”

“Kotone Shiomi from class 2-F. She’s hogging him.”

“The other day he completely ditched us to go talk to her.”

“Isn’t she dating Junpei?”

Shinjiro put his head between his hands. He’d rather have Castor unmuzzled than live through another second of unabashed, thirsty students and their nonsense.

Then, someone lightly grazed his beanie with a brush of their fingers. “You ok?”

He snapped his head up. For better or worse his wish got granted when the sounds from the table in front were quickly drowned out by Castor’s boisterous laugh rumbling through his bones. At least one of them was entertained. He should take a suppressant soon. “What are you doing here?” he almost barked, lips twitching in annoyance.

The girl of red eyes seemed as taken aback as he was. “I-I work here!” Her voice was raspier than last time they met, the bags under her eyes inadequately hidden behind make-up that mostly served to accentuate her pale constitution. Despite her maid outfit’s obvious eye-candy appeal, Shinjiro couldn’t get over the fact that whoever hired her for the night had failed to notice that she was, in fact, sick.

She held a heavy looking bag of coffee beans on her arms, but when he reached to pry it from her she had the audacity of tugging it away from him. “Just give it to me.” He tiredly said. ‘ _Let me leave this hellhole,_ ’ he thought.

Through her eyes flew a smidge of sympathy, one she quickly replaced with defiant stare. “I want to talk to you.”

‘ _Oh for fuck’s-_ ’ “I don’t even know you.”

“That’s why we need to talk!”

“No. That’s why you need to give me that bag so I can leave.”

“Just, hear me out first.”

“Don’t you have exams or some shit? Somethin’ else to spend your time on?”

She waved her hand dismissively. “I’ll be fine.”

“Sure you will.” He made another attempt to grab the bag but she pulled it away from him, again. “Will you stop that?”

“But-” She bit her lip and blinked a few times. “I want to talk.”

It wasn’t as if he hadn’t imagined a meeting of sorts between them, even if not in these exact circumstances. The mother of all coincidences had already presented them with enough random encounters for him to become suspicious, by this time going not twice, not thrice, but four times; so of course he knew a fifth one was on its way, he just didn’t know when that time would be. Even so, despite his need to assert himself, despite every salty question and angry rebuttal that had crossed through his head at the memory of her, he still didn’t know what to say. Just like that time at the hospital.

So even though he _did_ want to talk to her (in the technical sense, because he mostly wanted to blow off some steam), all that came out of his mouth was an angry “ ** _Why?_** ”

Both ‘ _Why do you want to talk to me?_ ’ and ‘ _Why did you tell me that it felt as if I was close to dying?_ ’ were both very adequate interpretations of that line. The more he thought about it the angrier he got, with said anger bringing him a bit of solace, a comfortable place from which to view things.

So either the girl was blind to his animosity or simply didn’t care, because she seemed unfazed. “I want to apologize. For that night.”

Her impassiveness simmered his anger down a notch. Despite everything, it wasn’t as if her words had been the cause of his grief all this time. Surprisingly, the more he put thought into it, the less he cared. Though the inevitability of his end put the hairs of his arms standing it didn’t seem as daunting when another person said it. His fate seemed intimidating when rolling around in his head, but there was a sense of placid acceptance from having someone else word it out. If a medical professional told him he had three days to live, would he yield to reality and lay down in wait? Doing the opposite would be useless, after all.

“It’s fine.” He said and meant it. “It’s not that big a deal.”

This had a curious effect on her. Somewhere in his words she had found permission to sit down on the chair next to him, keeping her next lines of conversation hushed, way too close for comfort. “Really?”

She was way too close, but if this was an attempt at a power grab he wouldn’t be the first to back down. Instead, he leaned further in, hands fisted inside his pockets. Her barely noticeable flinch gave him sick satisfaction. “Apology accepted. Now fuck off.” His tone definitely set the table beside him on edge, so he dialed it back a bit with the growling and overall demeanor by reminding himself that he was there for work, so it wouldn’t be good for business to creep away the patrons of the establishment he was sent to work with.

She didn’t seem any close to backing down though. “I mean it! I blurted it out without thinking and said something very inconsiderate. Now every time we’ll see each other it’ll be an awkward mess and-”

“Who said we’ll meet again?” he glared.

She bobbed her head slightly to the side, catching his attention to the dismissive roll of her wrist. “Well, no one, but you’re Akihiko-senpai’s friend, so it’ll definitely keep on happening.”

A thought crossed his mind. “Y’ scared I’m going to tell him how weird you are?”

She flinched ever so slightly and his brows furrowed. “I’m not weird!” Of course.

“I couldn’t give two shits about whoever you go around acting as the Grim Reaper to. And how full of yourself do you have to be to think we even talk about you?” Unless she was the new field leader, in which case they _did_ talk about her, at length, sort of, since Akihiko did most of the talking. And still, there was another girl amongst the new SEES recruits that could potentially fill that role.

He examined her figure further as she broke their proximity by leaning back and crossing her arms, sulking: was she unwell because of her time on Tartarus? Though drab, her skin wasn’t scarred, though that might have been due to a couple of Dias. “I don’t go around telling that to people.” She gave him this look, straight to his eyes, that sent shivers up his spine. “Just you.”

“Am I supposed to be flattered?” He propped his forearms on top of the table; the bag of coffee already forgotten on the floor. Again, he asked “Why?” but in a less hostile manner, more restrained, intrigued.

She was unsure of how to respond. “It’s…complicated.” Something about the way she shifted in place told him that she was debating whether or not to disclose something important, so he stayed put.

“Try me.”

She glanced around the café, making sure everyone was minding their own business and then asked “You have a persona, right?”

The question didn’t surprise him. He was sure the truth about his previous involvement with SEES would come to light sooner or later and even though it irritated him to think that either Akihiko, Mitsuru or, he groaned, Ikutsuki even, were making him the topic of their conversations, at the end of the day he’d be fine with it. His legacy should be a life lesson carved onto his tombstone, if anyone even cared to put one up in the first place: ‘ _Here lies Shinjiro Aragaki: he fucked up, don’t fuck it up like he did_.’

His silence apparently betrayed his thoughts. “No one’s talking behind your back.” Did she read minds? “I just have this…thing, this feeling, whenever I’m with certain people. It’s like a movie screen without edges – sometimes, from the corner of my eye, I see the webs of a conversation or I feel the stare of a persona.” She mulled over what to say next. “I can see a bigger picture in those moments, I guess.”

He considered her words with the necessary weight. Shinjiro found no reason to be doubtful of her, even if he very much didn’t enjoy the position this put him in. “Is it your persona?” Mitsuru could kick ass and identify the shadows' weaknesses and Chidori could pinpoint his location from the other end of the city – there wasn’t any reason for there to not be a persona with a knack for intuitive cognition, perhaps even pre-cognition.

“I don’t know.” She awkwardly smiled.

He twitched the heel of his boot on the floor. “N’ I’m close to dying?”

“I don’t know if you’re close to dying, it just felt that way.”

“Okay.” He rubbed the cane of his nose. “So how can you _feel_ that I’m close to dying?”

The absurdity of their conversation was not at all capitalized by her relaxed posture, mostly when compared to his. Shinjiro had his shoulders straight and a twitch on one of his legs that was there to stay, but it didn’t mean that he believed her any less, not even when she half-laughed and nonchalantly tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear, or when she scratched at the soft spot behind said ear and, more embarrassedly than apprehensive, said “Context clues, I guess. Death flags.” She looked up at him and again a small chill ran up his spine. “It’s ok, I have them too.”

He raised a brow, ready for a new set of questions, but his attempts were thwarted by a fake cough that took both of them out of their own little world and back into the noisy setting of the café. One of the other maids was a few steps away calling for her attention, motioning through her hands that she needed to wrap things up with him.

He was slightly peeved, but thought it better than to carry this conversation further into the night. Whatever problems they both had to deal with, this was neither the time nor the place to be dealing with them. His temples were already dully throbbing from the noise so he relented and finally leaned back. “Well then, welcome to the club. The…death flag club, or whatever”. He was unsure of what that meant still.

His answer made her pause for a second and she only got up to her feet after he was already standing. Her reaction was, again, curious – so the girl with a third eye failed to foresee that he wouldn’t blow her off? That he’d not only believe her but also be ok with it? But then she finally handed him the coffee bag and he chose to let the matter go. “Does that mean you forgive me?”

“Sure.” It was getting late and he needed to get back to Tomio with the goods. He rummaged his pockets for the familiar feel of his watch and groaned when he couldn’t feel it, recalling that morning not too long ago.

She squealed, catching him off guard. The frills on her dress fluttered when she bobbed on the tips of her shoes before tipping her head down in a quick, energetic bow. “My name’s Kotone Shiomi. Nice to me-heet you!”

“Yeah, I’m not doing that.”

“Aww come on. We’re friends now, right?”

“No. Were you dropped on your head as a kid?”

“Harsh.” She laughed more heartily than before, inexplicably making him search for his beanie to adjust as he turned to leave. She bowed again, this time with a more professional flair. “Goodnight, we hope to see you again!”

“Whatever.” He glanced behind him. “And get some rest will you, you look like a ghost.”

Though initially confused, she nodded. “Will do!”

Maybe she’d been right in acknowledging that their mutual connections would serve as a stepping stone for them to meet again, or maybe fate had them aligned to meet time and time again through added sets of inconspicuous circumstances. Never one to concede to fate, Shinjiro nonetheless felt the tiniest pull of eagerness at the possibility of keeping contact, but chalked it up to the fact that he’d never before opened up to this kind of subject matter.

It wasn’t until he creaked the front door open that he realized where he’d heard her name before. His eyes roamed over the café, searching beyond the rows of tables until he saw the one with Akihiko’s fangirls, now glaring daggers at Kotone’s retreating back as she made her way towards the kitchen area. Though he convinced himself that he couldn’t care less, something kept nagging the back of his head as he resumed his walk to the Mahjong Bar – an ugly sense of possessiveness, the kind that ran deep within him ever since his orphanage days.

Said ugly feeling came hand in hand with a smidgen of doubt. He hoped she wasn’t pulling his leg, relaying her apology just as a ploy to keep him from mouthing her off to Aki.

-

6/ 1 • M, Afternoon

Shinjiro rubbed the back of his neck on his way towards Hagakure Ramen. He’d spent what remained of his food supplies on dumb experiments that he at least didn’t burn off with ineptitude and now he had to either start going out for meals or actually do his own shopping instead of constantly stealing from the Bar. It bothered him somewhat, because he felt like he was turning into a housewife the same way werewolves turned under the full moon – with a lot of resistance and a sense of inevitability.

The sun hadn’t quite started to set in the distance when he sat down on his usual place at the counter. He ordered the special and took in how the place was practically empty, save for a lonely kid by the corner, munching on a big bowl of something he had never seen on the menu before. By the time his food came – scalding hot, just how he liked it – the entrance door creaked open.

“I’ll have what he’s having.” Akihiko said.

Shinjiro groaned, but said nothing. Unfazed, Akihiko sat on the spot right next to him, as if it was normal, and all Shinjiro could ponder on was on why these rendezvous with either Aki or Kotone existed in the first place. The more they happened the more he was convinced that the whole of his life was machinated by powers beyond their comprehension and the thought made him ill at ease. Thinking about how his life was intrinsically tied to an unmovable fate, no matter how further he tried to distance himself from it, always made him shake at the edges.

As always though, Akihiko was unperturbed. Knowing him he was probably elated at how the red string of fate kept on repeatedly serving him continuous, completely coincidental opportunities to spend time with him. “How’ve you been?”

He didn’t answer. Shinjiro was never one for exchanging formalities and only found it in himself to talk once Akihiko’s bowl was set in front of him, when Akihiko ripped open a small metallic-like packet and dumped its insides on the bowl. “You still on with that shit?”

He felt like the dumbest sucker when Akihiko answered with a nod, mixing in the powdered protein with his food. “I’m going into Tartarus again soon and I need to be ready.” His happiness at being able to set foot on the field was palpable, but not enviable. Though he understood the ‘why’, he’d rather Aki redirected his enthusiasm into a tamer hobby, like reading or some shit. “I’m the strongest I’ve ever been Shinji, you’ll see.”

The ghosts of bruises on Shinji’s skin replied that they didn’t want to see any more of it, really. “That shit’s poison for your veins.”

Akihiko chose to ignore him. “Now that exams are over we can focus on exploring Tartarus some more.” He noisily slurped on some noodles. “We keep finding new members to join SEES too.”

“I hope you’re not including me in that ‘we’ schpeal.”

He was ignored again. Akihiko tightened his fist in front of himself in what was a supposedly confident pose, though in the nerdiest way possible. “I keep getting closer to my ultimate goal.”

Though the intricacies of becoming the ‘strongest ever’ raised some pretty philosophical questions of their own, Akihiko’s mentality was a pretty simple one: fight first, ask questions later. It was a bullheaded way to live, but Shinji would be dumb to even try and find within him the same drive to move forward. Castor still kept its hands poised on top of his shoulders, weighing him down, waiting for the moment his resolve faltered for even a second to lash out and squeeze him to death. Even with the pills, his mind and soul constantly fought over what to do with his body.

Something got caught in his throat and he coughed. “Everything ok?” Aki asked, pale and confused, more so than usual.

“I’m fine.” Another cough. “I’m fine get off my case!”

“I just..” Aki was still pale and still looking at the empty space above Shinjiro’s head. For a moment it seemed like his gears were tirelessly working to piece together if the after image of Castor was the product of his imagination or not, but ultimately he shook his head and turned to his noodles. “Nevermind.”

They ate in silence for a while. The ramen was delicious, the perfect blend of spices and broth that he’d for sure try to recreate on his own some time, maybe with less salt and more…of something else. He’d experiment on what he could. It was definitely lame that he felt eager at the idea.

As background noise, the TV went on to a news report about the increase in Apathy Syndrome victims, but he only paid half attention because, at that time, he realized Aki was sneaking glances at him. He tried to shove him off with a glare but Aki was quicker with the cheese. “It feels nice, having a meal with you.”

“Yeah.” That didn’t feel right. “Whatever.” Better.

His tough guy act was tearing at the seams from beneath all the affection. They ate their meals in a semi-silence that Akihiko was by then proficient in side-stepping with his rare quips and light banter, more than pleased to lead the conversation, undoubtedly happy that he was even given a chance of chatting with him at all, even if most of it was one sided. Under each word Castor softened further inside the imaginary confinements of his soul, trotting around contentedly. It felt nice. It felt right. Even if Akihiko was going on about the latest school events that Shinjiro was unbothered to care about.

At some point sat behind them a group of three very noisy, very conspicuous, teenage girls, who eyed Akihiko as if he was prey. A thought occurred to him, a quick change of topics from nurse Edogawa’s latest bouts of crazy. “How’s Kirijo?”

Aki shrugged. “Still the same, I guess. She’s student council president again – I told her she was taking on too much, but to her it’s like she’s never doing enough.” Despite his words, there were stars behind his eyes. “She’s also been making good progress with Penthesilea. I think she’s trying to memorize Iwatodai’s entire city map to make her system work the way it does.” He noisily slurped on some noodles and immediately cleaned the contours of his mouth with a napkin when, previously, he would’ve done so with the back of his hand. It wasn’t hard to imagine what made him adopt table manners.

His noodles lost a bit of their taste as Shinjiro pondered over his next question. He gave them one last thoughtful chew before he spoke. “What about the new kid? The one leading the team.”

“What about her?”

“You going to take back wonder girl’s place as leader?”

Akihiko seemed torn. After a second or two of staring blankly into space he answered with a deflated laugh. “Probably not. She’s better at it than I was.” His face said that he’d rather not talk about it. “She’s good at seeing things from a wider perspective.”

Shinji nodded, a bit absent mindedly.

Throughout their childhood Akihiko had been an honest kid with a heart too big for his hand-me-downs. The only reason he ever had for hoarding the chocolates that oh so rarely were given to them as kids was just so that he’d later share them with his sister and, in time, with Shinji too. But if the kid two beds over was having a hard time sleeping he’d go and ask Miki if it was ok and would then open up his stash to share.

As a middle schooler, Akihiko had been a restless, thin stick of hormones and tragic pasts, but his heart was still in the right place, no matter the challenges he faced. He got beat up a lot by kids who envied just how high he carried himself, unaware or probably even aloof towards his plight, but Aki always got on top – first by beating their collective behinds as a need to assert himself and later by carrying them to the infirmary on his own back.

It made sense that Akihiko wasn’t fit to lead, as silly as that sounded. He’d probably spend most of his time acting like the overzealous older brother that he still was, even if in memory only.

“What’s she like? Out of Tartarus, I mean.” Still, for someone to take Akihiko’s place _and_ gain his blessing, she was sure to be the reincarnation of Alexander the Great. Did she place tactics above sentimentality? Was she gifted with unwavering resolve? Was she the same girl who nights ago had confided to him about her ‘death flags’? If so…did she confide about it with Aki too?

“Well…” The usually blunt Akihiko took long enough to answer for Shinjiro to raise a brow. “She’s strong, kind and weirdly unapologetic – she speaks her mind out a lot. She’s also extremely social. Every time I want to talk to her it’s like I have to fight her busy schedule for a free spot. Part of it is because she tends to be a ‘yes’ type of person, since I’ve never seen her refuse an invitation to anything unless she’s already made plans for something else.” He thought some more. “Her red eyes are very striking, but they suit her.”

Shinjiro hummed; at least one of his questions was answered.

Castor groaned, still curious.

Akihiko let out a small laugh. “She has a nice smile.”

Shinjiro coughed, having almost chocked on his food – Akihiko, protein powder for brains Akihiko, dumbest heartthrob of Gekkoukan High Akihiko, remarking on a girl’s smile? He fancied teasing him for it but before he got the chance to one of the girls from the table behind them took his blunder as a green flag and made her way towards them.

“Um, Akihiko-senpai?” The girl was bright and pink and held a smile so wide it could sway the moon if she tried. On her ears were large hoop earrings and tying her hair was an outrageous yellow pompom of massive proportions that Shinjiro was sure didn't obey school protocol or, at least, he was sure that if Mitsuru ever caught wind of it she would never allow that ghastly of a thing to go with their school uniform. In other news, the girl was definitely jutting out her already sizeable cleavage by closing in her upper arms.

But even though her intentions were pretty clear, the look of confusion on Aki’s face was enough to reel in Shinjiro’s previous thoughts: though his friend had remarked on a girl’s smile, that didn’t mean he was emotionally mature enough to recognize when a girl was attempting to flirt with him. “Yes?” Aki asked.

“Can we talk?” If possible, the girl pushed out her cleavage even more; the only way her shirt wasn’t ripping open was by mere will of the gods. Behind her, the other two girls had their heads turned towards their friend, either expecting her to succeed or, most likely, hoping to scavenge out the spoils should she fail. Vultures.

Despite the aggressive approach Akihiko was, bless his heart, none the wiser. His back straightened and he seemed to be debating whether to be politely dismissive or dismissively polite. “Sorry, but I’m busy right now.”

“Oh, I’ll be quick.” She said as she sat on the empty seat next to his. Shinjiro had to give it to her candidness, because if anyone dared to romantically pursue Akihiko they’d have to be as blunt as a hammer to get through that thick skull of his. Shame it wasn’t the right time, nor the right place, and Shinjiro’s patience was never known to be wider than a thin line of thread.

“Let me translate.” In place of Akihiko’s attempts at redirecting the girl elsewhere, Shinjiro swiveled in place to look at her directly. “He’s telling you to fuck off.”

The girls at the table giggled. _Vultures_.

The one next to Akihiko, however, stood her ground. She scrunched up her nose and crossed her arms in distaste. Suffice to say, her smile wouldn’t be swaying any moon after all. “And who are you?”

“His girlfriend.” He deadpanned. “Now beat it.”

Sensing the rising tensions Hagakure’s owner had stepped closer to mediate, but ended up snorting into his own hand and walking away. The girl was not amused by this, and neither was Akihiko, who had his forehead leaning against his fist. “You and your sharp tongue.”

Damn, he was doing it again. At face value, Shinjiro had nothing to gain by acting as Akihiko’s mother. He balked at the thought even, and reminded himself that Akihiko was, in fact, his own person and not an extra appendage that he had to keep tabs on in case it bumped into a wall he didn’t notice. Not letting Aki deal with his own problems was a very dumb thing to do, even if it annoyed him that he couldn’t deal with regular life situations with the same kind of assertiveness that he’d always reserve for combat.

He looked at Aki, then at the girl and thought ‘ _I should go_ ’.

Castor snarled as Shinji got up to leave. There was a flash of something fearful behind Akihiko’s eyes, as if letting him walk out the door was a death sentence, as if he’d vanish into thin air. For his part, Shinjiro eyed both bowls, said “Finish your meal” and walked out.

Throughout his childhood Shinjiro had been an attention seeking kid with way too many demands coming out of his, as he remembered it being, very punchable mouth. Eventually he began to convince himself that he neither cared nor exactly wished to leave the orphanage walls within which he grew up in, acting out like the brat he was and spoiling every opportunity for adoption that knocked at the door just so the status quo was maintained. He never knew his parents and would rather keep it that way, but that didn’t mean that he wasn’t salty about it, because deep down he had always wished to be a part of something more tightly knit, which was what had gravitated him towards Aki and Miki – the siblings that came in together and never left each other’s side.

As a middle schooler he sometimes felt like he got that wish, but never quite as he’d imagined it. With Miki gone Aki stuck to him like a second skin and Shinji had easily slipped into his role of protector, a make-believe brother of sorts, even if he’d never replace her. But then Aki awoke his persona and Mitsuru came into the picture and suddenly Akihiko wanted to be even stronger, to attain something that he could’ve never achieved with boxing alone. He started taking physical exercise like a religion and sneaking out at night to secretly hang out with shadows. Akihiko had taken in every fight that came his way, won, and craved for _more_ , even if his arms were as slim as sticks and his knees as wobbly as a newborn deer, and Shinjiro was none the wiser…for a while.

Of course, Shinjiro hadn’t been better, all gangly limbs and face not even his mother had loved, getting into trouble for the hell of it and doing inane shit that he was still embarrassed by to this day. But back then he’d thought himself superior, as if he at least had had his shit in check from the beginning, compartmentalized in metaphorical boxes inside his heart: in one box there was Aki and his scrawny ass and after that, hierarchically, came Shinjiro’s moodiness and his need to be alone; and after that came whatever, he couldn’t remember, because eventually the scenario shifted.

When he found out about SEES he barged into the Iwatodai dormitory like it was nobody else’s business but his, fully aware that whatever Aki was doing was getting him new bruises every day. But after the initial trauma of fake guns that shattered the glass walls of his soul and frightening creatures that roamed an impossible timeframe between one day and the next, he came to create other boxes – boxes that he could only retroactively take into account. Right after his need to protect Akihiko came to be the need to protect Mitsuru, uphold SEES’s objectives, going out into the streets at night to be thankless vigilantes and _beat up the bad guys_ and taming the raging fire inside of him that sometimes threatened his control over Castor.

Shinjiro glanced at his hands.

He saw things differently now. Akihiko had always been steadily gaining new boxes to compartmentalize himself in: one for himself (he hoped), another for boxing club and dozens of others for things Shinjiro probably didn’t know about, like girlfriends and exams. Beyond that, Akihiko had two giant lumps of baggage that he carried with him everywhere he went, which just so happened to be welded to each other: one had Shinjiro’s name, and the other had the Amada family name.

Akihiko would always be family to him; he’d do anything for him – even if that meant leaving him to be by himself, which was how it should be.

By the time he finished his thoughts he’d already crossed the road towards the limits of the train station, opting to stand there and wait for the next train to take him to Port Island. He heard hurried footsteps behind him and couldn’t help but sneer. “She was trying to flirt with you, y’ know.”

“What?” As fast as Aki’s blush came to be, it just as quickly disappeared. “Never mind that, why’d you leave so fast?”

“S’ you could pay my meal.”

Shinjiro had a feeling that he’d be getting decked in the face if they weren’t in a very public, very populated space. Akihiko sighed. “Look, I need to ask you a favor.”

“I’m not coming back.”

“I know that! Damn it Shinji it’s like you’re taunting me.” He felt Aki’s desire to punch him straight in the jaw grow tenfold, but remarkably he stayed put. From his back pocket Aki produced a folded piece of paper, handing it over to him. “I need your help. There’s a student at Gekkoukan High with the potential, but I can’t find her anywhere and every adult I’ve come in contact with has been as unhelpful as ever. I fear something might’ve happened to her.”

Disgruntled, Shinjiro took the paper from Akihiko’s hand. It was a student record for one Fuuka Yamagishi, a name that, though he didn’t know, he recognized from somewhere. “And what’s it to me?”

“I know you spend a lot of time in the alleys, so I thought maybe you could keep an eye out for anything suspicious.”

Shinjiro chuckled dryly, but still stuffed the paper down his own pocket. “Anything else?”

Akihiko exhaled, his patience running thin. “Why do you have to be so sour?”

“Part of the charm. I’ll do this for you and then you’ll leave me alone?”

“What?” Aki visibly flinched. “No!”

The train was seconds away from arrival. “Then good luck finding your new _recruit_.”

He deserved that strike to his chin.

-

6/ 6 • Sa, Evening

At first he thought his eyes were playing tricks on him, like his sleep deprived mind had finally snapped in half and revealed to be a gaping hole for insanity to fall into. But the more he rubbed them the murkier they became, to the point where had to call his coworker to look outside the window and make sure that he wasn’t going crazy.

“Ohhhh yeah” She sounded partially amused and equal parts terrified. “Haha…” She sharply inhaled. “Gekkou High babies on their first stroll through alley town. And on a Saturday of all days – this can only spell disaster.”

“Tsk.” He fished out his apartment keys from his pocket and turned to leave. “Keep the fort going. I’ll be back in a bit.”

As he made his way out of the bar he heard her faintly mutter a “Good luck”. In a flash he grabbed his coat to hide his uniform beneath and put on his beanie for charm points before jumping down the emergency stairs outside of his room, in a hurry to save the fresh pieces of meat from becoming bloodied new rugs for the alleys of Port Island. Kotone was there with the bunch and for someone who claimed to be able to see the ‘greater picture’ her view on what the deadbeats at the alleys could and would unquestionably do to her and her friends seemed plenty shallow at best and absolutely blind at worst.

“Man, I feel sorry for you, Goatee. This bitch is a pain in the ass… huh!!”

“Ugh!”

He rounded the corner just in time to see one of them double over in pain, arms tight to his stomach. The other girl in the brainless bunch called the guy’s name in surprise and immediately clenched her jaw when one of the delinquents took a step towards her. To further their collective stupidity, which he was sure by now was due to their shared use of one mere brain cell, they didn’t take this time to run away. _Instead_ they grated on Shinjiro’s nerves by staying put, Kotone especially – she stood her ground, resolute, with a power stance convincing enough that the other girl found it rational to hide behind her for protection. _Fuck_ they were dumb, inviting themselves to a fight that only further encouraged the other guy’s perverse glee.

“That’s enough.” Shinjiro stepped towards them, walking through the middle as the chicks behind the thugs made way for him to pass, muttering between themselves either his name or the stories that preceded him. “They didn’t know what they were getting into. I’ll make sure they leave. Alright?”

By then he knew most of the regulars around the alleys, so it didn’t surprise him when the guy with the counterfeit, cobra patterned shirt was the one to vocally express his disdain. “Who do you think you are, dumbass? You want some too?” All bark, weak bite. He could take care of both easily, though he’d rather do it quickly and not let his need to release pent up frustrations and some much needed violence get out of hand.

Unconsciously Shinjiro tightened his fists inside his coat’s pockets, making himself seemingly open to an impromptu attack. The attacker’s fist never got a chance at striking him – Shinji’s fight response was all encompassing, superior to his flight, and he took a shot he was sure would hit: with his own head, right in the middle of the guy’s thorax.

“Shit…” The guy was knocked onto his ass, probably robbed of a breath or two as he coughed. “You just crossed the line! You think you’re going home alive!?”

“…Wanna give it a try?” He felt the way Castor threw its head back in guttural, daunting laughter. Despite himself, Shinjiro hoped the guy would get up and throw hands.

“Uh…” But the punk, though he looked as mad as a bull, was on his way to realizing that he maybe, probably, very much so, started a fight that would not only ruin his night, but take the party to the Hospital. “S-Screw this.”

If there was any gratification to be taken from this mess, it was the look on their faces as they finally identified who it was they were dealing with. Even though the girls behind him were bawling their eyes out with laughter, calling them losers and whatnot, both guys didn’t dare raise another finger, though they did try to rile him up some more. “Damn you, Shinjiro…”said the other of the guys. “That’s right, you’re from Gekkou High too, aren’t ya!?”

The first one finally got up. “You better grow eyes in the back of your head!”

Shinjiro clicked his tongue and paid them no mind. For their part, they’d probably go on with their night and do their own thing, boozing themselves up enough to forget the embarrassment. At the dawn of the next day they’d barely remember his presence in their lives and Shinjiro Aragaki would go back to being that one loner who served some ass-beating to anyone whom he felt deserved it, whenever he felt like it, whether his opponents wanted him to or not. Their threats rarely held any weight.

Once they were gone, he noted that the only guy between the dumb trio of students was already on his feet, shaking off any help that his friends were offering. “Oh man, Senpai” Damn it. The only pain he got after that fight was the knowledge that he’d now be viewed as senpai to these juniors, like some sort of respectable member of a societal hierarchy that he wanted no part in anymore. “That was awesome!”

He did a quick glance over the three to check for injuries, only setting himself up to admonish them once he saw none. “Hey, I remember you… You clowns were in Aki’s room at the hospital. You idiots!” He glared at Kotone especially. “Get outta here. This place isn’t for you.”

“Wait!” said the other girl, “We came here for a reason.”

He spared but a split-second of thought on what that reason could possibly be if not for the need to probably do something either illegal or very stupid, or maybe even both, before he recalled his latest ‘talk’ with Akihiko. He should’ve known – yet again when he tried his best to distance himself from anything even remotely related to either Aki or SEES, it came back to bite him in the ass. “Did Aki tell you to come here?”

Kotone gave him a look, as if, true to her words, she’d understood the context below the surface of their conversation. “No.” She answered.

“…Hmph.” He didn’t think their next meetup would be under these circumstances. It left him grouchy. “What do you wanna know? About that ghost story?”

The other girl answered: “Um. Yeah… How’d you know?”

Because he’d actually put in the time and effort to look into it, even if in the end he’d decided that he wasn’t going to share the gathered intel. It was probably too late for Yamagishi, either way.

He’d heard some girls mock Fuuka and had put two and two together when those same girls ended up at the hospital. He knew Fuuka had the potential. He knew something was amiss when tales of a ghost story started weaving their way amongst every student he passed by. But even when given the enormity of the stakes, even when faced with all of the horrible consequences his inaction could bring forth, he wouldn’t fall back into old habits and into Aki’s open arms. Even with knowledge of all possible repercussions, it wasn’t, for him, reason enough of an excuse to contact Akihiko. Luckily for him Castor had been tucked behind a concrete prison, under too many suppressants too see him merely breathing through life instead of acting on his responsibilities.

He’d never claimed to be a good man. He wasn’t about to start being one.

He glared at the group. He glared at Kotone and wondered if her red eyes were seeing something she didn’t already know. “It’s a rumor. Those girls who wound up in the hospital were here talkin’ shit every night…about all the things they’d done to some girl named Fuuka.”

“Fuuka…?” Junpei was in deep thought. “You mean Fuuka Yamagishi, from 2-E? They were picking on her?”

He nodded. “That’s why people are saying it’s Fuuka’s spirit that did it.” ‘ _Or her persona_ ,’ he thought.

He thought he was throwing enough hints for the dumb nuts to realize something, but the other girl surprised him by revealing just how little they actually knew: “Fuuka’s spirit…? Wait, what do you mean by that?”

“You guys don’t know?” He didn’t care. He wouldn’t care. He was just throwing them a bone. “This Fuuka girl might be dead. She hasn’t been home in over a week.”

“Are you serious!? I thought she was out sick…” Junpei and the girl turned to each other while Kotone kept her eyes on him. “But, she’s missing!?”

The girl with the choker crossed her arms. “So much for the ghost story. Mr. Ekoda is the homeroom teacher for 2-E, right? Does he know about this…?”

It finally crossed his mind that the situation had more layers than he’d previously thought. He felt a small pang of regret for his behavior towards Aki, the same Aki that fought to become the strongest ever just so he could protect those who couldn’t protect themselves, all the Mikis in the world. His fight was still ongoing, even if not physical, as his injuries were still healing. He felt like a dick for only recalling Aki’s need to get stronger and not his will to fight for those who couldn't – so preoccupied had he been with shutting himself away that he failed to notice that the protein actually had a purpose beyond irreparably damaging Akihiko’s taste buds.

He let slip the slightest of murmurs “I get it, Aki… Still trying to make up for the past” and pinched the bridge of his nose. Shinjiro put himself down to be he the one with enough hang-ups to last him through his afterlife, but “It’s you who can’t let go.” He shook the feeling off and raised his eyes to meet the trio, who’d definitely heard his slip-up. “Nothing. That’s all I know. …Satisfied?”

Though she’d been quiet, Kotone was the one to speak. “Thanks for saving us.” It rubbed him the wrong way. He didn’t save no one. Fuuka could’ve been dead already, or worse – she could’ve been the one harming others.

But this was Kotone. He recalled how this was the same person that had claimed to be able to see ‘beyond the edges of the screen’ and something inside him snapped.

Had she expected him to swoop in and save the day, or was this just another case for the tally of coincidences that summed up his life?

Did she wander into the alleys with her friends, agreeing to step foot into the most dangerous part of the city, just so he would be mixed in with the party?

It couldn’t be… but the look they shared only served to further his suspicions and suddenly, he wasn’t as eager to share a conversation with her again.

“…Don’t come around here again.” He told them. Told her.

“Um,” the girl with the light brown haired started, sensing something was amiss with his interaction “thank you very much. You even gave us a hint…You’re very kind.”

“Huh?” The back of his neck and hands tingled in that familiar, annoying way and he was once again viewing things through lenses of anger.

The girl took a step back. “I, um… Never mind.”

“Tch… Don’t come here again.” He repeated before leaving, taking his pent up frustration with him.


	5. Introspection (Photographers) and Extrospection

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some parts get really negative in this one, so consider this a fair warning.

6/ 9 • Tu, Dark Hour

Castor was starting to act a little too intensely, running riot from within its enclosure like an animal trapped, gnawing at his own leg to be set free.

Shinjiro clicked his tongue. He’d yet to indulge in his daily intake of suppressants because he’d wanted to try and attain a sense of self that had been lost in the murky waters of his external struggles as of late. Though his days as a homeless kid were gone and though he didn’t wish for his life to fall through his fingers the same as it once did, he acknowledged that at least back then his mind had been occupied with survival. He wasn’t so sure of that anymore.

**_Condolences to your loss of integrity._ **

He groaned.

Shinjiro reasoned that, for the time being, he’d fight the tides that strenuously tried to drown him and aim for a regular intake of breaths. It seemed easier to do lately, after he heard Kotone word out his fate for him, having realized that he wasn’t singled out in this predicament. His conscious reasoning was helped by the insight that, in time, Aki would learn to separate himself from his past and live without their poisonous connection. Like a flower on concrete.

**_Your breaths are a waste on this mortal coil._ **

“I’m trying to reason with you, you fuck.”

There was also Ken Amada. He’d seen him only once after October of last year, sometime around Christmas, walking around Paulownia Mall with one of his caretakers. Shinjiro’s life was also Ken’s to do as he pleased. He owed it to the kid to live long enough to tell him the truth and deal with the consequences. If there was one fate he knew he’d be absolutely willing to accept as pre-determined, it would be the one Ken Amada would choose for him.

**_Your servitude is endearing, if not destitute._ **

Shinjiro slapped his knees and conceded defeat. “Ok now, off you go.” Castor hadn’t yet reached the epitome of its self-deprecating violence by choking him out of his misery, but Shinjiro felt that he’d had enough for one night. Perhaps for the next month. Or year.

He took out the small orange bottle, popped a suppressant into his mouth and felt Castor laugh through the spasms of his muscles as the drug gave him the usual sensory overload: the Dark Hour reeked of old pennies, the copper offending his nose enough to bring an itch to his eyes. He sat for a beat longer than usual, taking in the almost full moon shining down on his lonely form on an empty bench on Port Island Station’s plaza. Before the heartbeats from inside the scarce coffins that lay around could drive him insane the drug dulled down his everything and he was left in benumbed bliss.

Castor wasn’t something he could keep on ignoring (as if he hadn’t _tried_ ), but unmovable fates aside, this freedom from his persona’s constant grip edged on the sublime. There were rarely any cryptic voices inside his head and Castor’s hands no longer weighted his shoulders down, a pleasure he’d forgotten to appreciate for so long that it felt wrong to be this free. He could no more feel the glare of its red pupils tremble above the empty black sockets of its skull every night and the usual galloping force it held against his muscles became a trickle of water, relaxing rather than demanding, peaceful instead of warring. It felt good to be normal.

It angered him.

He could’ve sworn he once (a long time ago, too long ago) had looked up at the skies in wonder, with philosophical shit only kids found interesting burned on the tip of his tongue, held to believe that working hard would solve all hardships and that he’d inevitably find peace if he tried hard enough. The truth was that the world had never expected a great deal out of him in the first place, and though he thought that he’d been doing a tolerable enough job with the hand that he’d been given, it had never been enough and it never would be. Looking back, he now understood what the universe had answered back, and it had been bitter and true: ‘ _survive’_.

Be it with Aki, Mitsuru, SEES or even Fuuka Yamagishi, he couldn’t keep going. He couldn’t leave room open for saving the planet or being a good friend or any other type of bullshit because he’d always be short on something and his shortcomings would always fill up with sand what his worthlessness hadn’t already filled first, slowing him down, making him the defect. **FUCK** – his shortcomings killed a person!

His life amounted to questions of mortality that he didn’t have the stomach to deal with, of why was his persona a rampaging monster and what did he do to deserve this, to be like this – was it genetic or was it just him? Was it foretold or did he learn to be this way? Did he chose Castor or did Castor chose him? He never had the potential, Ikutsuki had told him that much, and yet he’d forced out what was never meant to be and then suffered and suffered and _suffered_ and hadn’t he done enough?

And yet – _and yet_ – he couldn’t die, did and _didn’t want to die_. And this push and pull of wants and needs was driving his existential crisis into a corner with an actual name and a set of metaphysical arms that choked him out of his stupor when the going got _dull_.

Suddenly something unpleasant erupted from the depths of his lungs and he coughed up a storm. The noise echoed through the still night and left him distressed because of how raw it felt, painfully grating around the walls of his throat. It was the first time that regaining composure felt difficult, the return of his rhythmic breathing taking long enough for his heart to pinch around the slightest of panic attacks, even though it lasted seconds. It had been, by far, his worst coughing fit to date.

He closed his eyes and slowly breathed in through his nose; breathed out through his mouth. The surprisingly large dinner he’d enjoyed was tossing in the pits of his stomach and his forehead was damp. His hands were shaky. His nerves on edge.

There was still an entire hour to go through before the Dark Hour reached its end which meant that he didn’t need to rush to the Mahjong Bar to resume work.

So he reminisced, something Castor wouldn’t have allowed him to do.

Years ago, when he’d first joined SEES, he, Aki and Mitsuru had taken a slow night by what it was and sat down by the railings near the sea at the Industrial Zone for a breather and some cans of soda. The poisonous green tint of everything had done nothing to sour their mood as they talked the hour away.

He chuckled (he chuckled?). Recalling the moment, he wasn’t so sure that regular middle schoolers would find it appealing to sit around for an hour doing nothing but get enthralled in abstract conversations on the meaning of things, but hell if he knew. His compartmentalization had never allowed much room for his social skills to really flourish: there were his duties to Aki and then there were his duties to Mitsuru, and world be damned because back then, as long as his friends were safe, he wouldn’t have given a flying fuck if everything had gone up in flames. That was, until he came to learn to give weight to that as well, maybe later than he should’ve allowed.

But he did once have a bit more patience for companionship other than SEES…sans Ikutsuki. He had a friend whom he’d play hooky with, joshing around with how much they’d get away with before Kirijo found out. He’d had another that loved to visit the arcade, though he never got to be persuaded to join him at DDR. He had this girl he had a crush on, a relationship he ruined by acting like a dismissive prick (he groaned at that particular memory). Even back then Castor had warned him of his soft heart, reminded him to play his chess carefully less he be left hurt and unstable. Those moments seemed very far away.

He leaned down, put his face to his knuckles and let out another chuckle (another!?). He sounded like an old man. Despite the edge of his memories being adorned with melancholy he _liked_ reminiscing, thrived on dwelling in the established past, where he was comfortable.

He’d spent so much of his time clashing against Castor’s beliefs that it was easy to forget that those were _his_ beliefs as well. So, of course, even if Castor wasn’t a constant buzz on his eardrums, its words remained ingrained to his core:

“You live in the past.” He recited to himself. ** _“_** In the past you are immortal. Pain reminds you that you are human. To be human is to die.”

He’d never been a stable person. A few times, as a kid, he’d ambled close the tell-tale signs of a malnourished psyche and as a result the adults had carried him with too much care, as if he’d easily break if mismanaged in the slightest. What he understood early on was that children in his position were inclined to lash out strong before crumbling down, but somehow he’d never gotten to that second part, at least not before ‘the incident’. He had managed his life while atop a tightrope but his need for control had him glued to the strings, even against the harshest of winds. It was the same in battle: he took pride in his sturdiness, in his lack of weaknesses and strengths, comforted by the shallow, misguided belief that he’d grown roots to the tightrope and couldn’t be thrown off, even if it swayed.

Living after ‘the incident’, however, was a blur of nothingness. There was no tightrope, no sense of balance, no wind to shake him up. Maybe he’d already fallen and broken his bones on the ground, perhaps his corpse still lay there, in between the walls of a certain unnamed alleyway, while his soul aimlessly wandered. Because he remembered how at times, after ‘it’, he’d felt the lack of feelings: the longs hours unblinking at the wall of his dorm room, uncaring, unmoving; the vague hum inside his body, like ants marching below his skin, as he routinely slept throughout the blend of days, as if the concept of time didn’t exist. It didn’t. Sometimes he’d feel hungry and sometimes he wouldn’t.

During those days Castor had been somewhat of a tamed beast, chained like a neglected and abused puppy that would one day grow to bite its owner. But his slow drizzle through days in apathy had been slowly lifting, promising something beyond a closed curtain that left him with a tingle in his fingertips, prompting him to brush them against the drapes of acceptance and figure out a ‘truth’ that, at the time, had felt substantial enough for him to be frightened by it. He had been close enough that if he’d pushed his fingers further he would’ve had to acknowledge it, _accept_ it. If he’d done so, perhaps things would’ve turned out differently. Perhaps Castor would’ve been less of a Castor and he would’ve been more of Shinji.

But one day, as he was shuffling his feet towards his appointment with a Kirijo approved psychologist, he decided that he should just… leave. It didn’t really matter where. He’d missed his train stop on purpose, had fallen asleep and wherever he’d woken up became his exit.

“To live is not to breathe, but to act. Huh.”

He gave his eyes a good rub with the palms of his hands, hoping to relieve the pressure that was starting to build. His stomach was churning and his head felt light before feeling very, very heavy, and he fell asleep.

-

Miki was a tiny, disheveled mop of white hair. She’d usually sleep on her stomach and her unruly excuse for a hair would stick out from under the covers like a dandelion. To wake her up Shinji found it funny to blow air at her ear and bless her little heart she never failed to amuse him with her reactions.

“You’ll see.” She told him one day. They had to wake up early because it was wash day, and all the bed covers were to be replaced with new ones. “It’ll be cold and sweet. You’ll in be aweee.”

“Oh yeah?” He mocked surprise. “What’ll you do?”

“She’ll huff. And puff.” Aki wasn’t into japing at early morning hours and everything he did was followed by a yawn. His movements were sluggish in his fight against a pillow case, which he soon gave up on in favor of dropping back first onto the nearest bed. Miki giggled, one of those small laughs that only little children could do.

“I’ll do it too.” Another kid said, but Aki was too busy being a lazy bum to notice and Miki was too worried with poking said lazy bum.

Shinjiro made a face. “You’ll…what?”

“I think it’s obvious.” Aki suddenly said, still not really paying attention. He pointed his fingers to his temple, like a gun, and pulled an imaginary trigger. “Doesn’t take a meathead to figure that out.” The boy nodded at that, but Shinji was still confused.

The kid smiled at him, his brown hair shining green with the glint of the moon, his tired brown eyes a mirror to past regrets. “I’ll get my revenge.” He said, before he burst into flames.

-

Shinjiro woke up in cold sweat, heart threatening to pound his ribcage red and blue. He considered his surroundings and realized he was still in the middle of the station plaza, only now he was strewn across the floor and not on top of the bench.

After a colorful succession of cusses he got up and rubbed his back. The night was still green and sickly to the sight, with a moon still mostly full on the skies, so at least he wouldn’t get in trouble for sleeping on the job.

“My, what a coincidence.” Hissed a voice behind him.

He turned to look, though he already knew who it belonged to. “Ain’t no such thing as coincidences.”

Takaya smiled and slightly cocked his head to the side. On his hip he rested one of his hands, right above his revolver. Shinjiro wondered if the thing even worked during the Dark Hour or if it was just for show. Mitsuru had once clarified that the only reason her bike could function during the 25th Hour was due to the integration of a Plume of Dusk in its engine, though he had no way to be sure of their supposed rarity, having never found one himself.

Takaya continued: “Despite your hard edges I sense you to be a person of great spiritual understanding. In another life, perhaps, we could have been friends.” Shinjiro almost withdrew into himself at the same time that Jin gasped. “Alas, we are different in the most important of aspects. For instance, your persona is tightly woven to you, not merely attached. It displeases me.”

Even after encountering him several times, the meaning behind a lot of what Revolver Jesus spewed remained elusive. Shinjiro turned his eyes towards Chidori, who stood muted to the side, and then back to Takaya. “What are you doing here anyway? I barely see you out on a stroll.”

“Business.” Jin was the one to respond. “As in our business and none of yours.”

Shinjiro rolled his eyes.

Jin flipped away the strands of hair from his eye with a shake of his head. “That reminds me: you’ve made a lot of enemies, Shinjiro Aragaki. I’ve been notified that a lot of people want to see you dead.”

He raised his chin at him, unamused “That a threat?”

Takaya chuckled, palming Jin’s shoulder. “Goodness no, it’s merely a warning. I wouldn’t want anything to happen to you. Your capital is precious to us.” Takaya spoke in soft tones and soft smiles but with a very real venom underneath “Do remember to keep that in mind next time you fail with your transactions though, or I may be inclined to turn a blind eye.”

Right. He was just going to ignore all of that. “I’ve got the cash if you got bottles to spare.”

Jin turned to Takaya first, who answered in his stead: “But of course. We were hoping for your patronage once more.”

“That so?” Something about that answer unsettled him.

Jin slyly smiled and, after nodding at Takaya, opened his metallic suitcase.

-

6/ 11 • Th, Afternoon

There was a bit of a commotion going on near the back ends of the alleys, adjoined to an area Shinjiro was pretty sure was a battleground for a turf war that had begun with the creation of the island itself. He recalled what Jin had said to him, about the amount of enemies that he’d gathered over his time in Iwatodai, and found it intelligent to step away from the uproar of yells and broken bottles and into the narrow paths between concrete and brick.

In his hands rested a brown paper bag with a half absurd amount of produce that he’d bought in sale. He doubted he’d ever get a chance to eat all of it before it rotted, but at least he’d get to have multiple attempts at trying that one quiche recipe he’d found in a magazine. For next time, though, he’d better start thinking more with his head and less with his wallet and not fall into the grocery shopping trappings of last minute sales and ‘buy one get one free’ schemes. Just because he now had money didn’t mean that he’d get to spend it all on vegetables; he ought to spend it on building his stock of suppressants instead, just in case.

Too focused on his blunder Shinjiro didn’t hear the hurried steps of someone on the opposite side and so bumped into a random Gekkoukan High student at the turn of the corner. He barely flinched, but the poor guy not only slammed face first into his chest but also tripped on his own two feet and fell on his ass, scattering the papers he’d held on his arms everywhere.

“Sorry about that.” Despite his attempt at an apology the guy barely registered it in favor of desperately grabbing his work. Feeling kind of bad Shinjiro leaned down as well, his bag still held by one arm. “Let me help you with that.”

“ **NO**!” The kid’s shout echoed through the alley, surprising Shinji. The student seemed surprised as well, turned around to check if anyone else heard him and frenetically returned to gathering the papers. “I mean, no. It’s ok. I’m sorry for bumping into you.” He spoke in a hurry, finished grabbing the rest of what he deemed important and made a mad dash towards the exit, not bothering to pick up about four other papers.

Shinji didn’t bother calling out for him or even grabbing him by his backpack. His mouth straightened into a line as his brain churned in search for a reason, before turning to look at where the he’d come from.

He waited for a few seconds but no one came through, no one followed. The alley was empty save for the resounds of the brawl a block over. He mulled the scene over in his head and settled on the thought that perhaps the kid had just been scared of him. A smart move, smarter than some other students he knew. Maybe this one had actually taken heed to the rumors of what happened to Gekkou High students who walked around the alleys in their uniforms. Despite his sound reasoning he couldn’t help but feel a tad bitter.

Languidly he grabbed the papers that were left behind and contemplated whether to mail them to the school’s lost and found or to simply throw them in the trash when he noticed how they were mostly scribbles, asinine excuses for school notes or random sketches of teachers with comically long mustaches that he actually recognized. He was about done when another paper, much smaller than the rest, flew a few feet away. ‘ _Stupid island and its stupid sea breeze_ ’. He debated on why he should care but ended up walking the extra steps to retrieve it.

But the contents of this ‘paper’ were very much unlike the rest and the act of flipping it over caught him with enough of a surprise that he choked on air and spluttered. He glanced at the picture in his hands again, _to make sure that he hadn’t just imagined it_ , and the astonishment made him momentarily forget what he was holding because, when he shot up, a stray cabbage rolled from his bag to the floor – and then he dumbly bowed to pick it up and the motion launched a single, ripe tomato smacking onto the pavement with a wet _splat_ , splattering juice all over.

Breathing deep did nothing to appease him. Annoyance broiled in his stomach the more he looked at the burst of red so he let the mess be and instead focused on the picture of Kotone in what he assumed to be a regular gym class, or perhaps a sports club.

“ _Can it_.” He told a curious Castor before it could put to inaudible words whatever it was that crossed both their minds at the same time. Surprisingly, Castor had mixed feelings on what to make of the situation, suddenly peeking out from its enclosure to just end up remaining silent and very… _attentive_.

And Shinjiro was attentive too, processing both the picture and its inherent _intent_. He took note of the angle, the focus and the tilt of the frame. He then recalled how jittery the kid that had bumped into him had been, with one eye over his shoulder and hands frenetically working to gather the papers. He took it all in and knew that he felt bothered and squeamish because he understood the context beyond the picture, just like Kotone herself had claimed to be able to do.

Kid was lucky to be so far gone or Shinjiro would’ve kicked his teeth in.

Instead, he crushed the picture in his hand before deliberating over it further and opting to shred it to little pieces, as small as he could, and letting the wind take away the remarkably obvious candid shot of Kotone in her gym clothes. He could taste both anger at the guy rolling dry around his mouth and dismay at having the image burned to his head. The turmoil of emotions left him feeling weird and grossed out, guilty, even, as if he was the one at fault for having seen such a thing without Kotone’s permission.

He cracked his fingers, the back of his hands itching for a fight, before he realized that they were weirdly clammy, his whole body out of order and jumpy. Castor kept quiet but Shinjiro could feel its lingering gaze, felt its interrogating eyes flicker from his seething heart to the quickly disappearing bits of an undiscernible photograph.

Above it all, the more he let his modesty and sympathy and overall awkwardness linger the more something sinister pulled him towards that night when Kotone had come for a visit with her friends, reminding him that this was the same person who’d come to the most dangerous place in Iwatodai looking like fresh meat to the delinquents that lived there just so she could search for clues to a situation she knew little to nothing about. He was still cross with her, convinced that she’d had her chest puffed out that night because she’d been sure that he would’ve come to their rescue.

Then again, he thought, this was the same person who’d come to the most dangerous place in Iwatodai looking like fresh meat, stupidly so, as if her experiences in Tartarus had led her to assume that exploiting simple-minded shadows was the same as dealing with the scum of the alleys. Perhaps she did. Perhaps SEES’ astonishing field leader had been bashed too much in the head to think straight and he was being a prick.

He shook his head. It couldn’t have been a choice of hers to be preyed by a pervert with a camera and too high of a libido. The whole situation was predatorily depraving and hard to shake off.

-

6/ 21 • Su, Evening

Just like with Fuuka Yamagishi, whom he admittedly was quite relieved to hear had been found alive and well, he tried to chalk his alertness towards the topic of Kotone Shiomi and sleazebag photographers to the fact that nothing stopped his ears from taking heed of the rumor mill once it inevitably started rolling. And not because he was worried. No way.

However, in truth, there was barely a soul making Kotone the centerpiece of a conversation. The implication took the edge off of the simmering broil on his chest, the realization that no one even seemed aware of the picture that he was by then almost sure he’d been the only one to see outside of the one who took it. He instead kept his attention on the faces of everyone that even remotely resembled the guy whom he bumped into, reasoning that his hands were itchy and the guy was prime for some bruising either way so, therefore, his attentiveness was not only warranted but obviously explainable.

**_A battle does not require context, only spirit._ **

Yes, that. Also, he should take some suppressants soon.

In return what he’d learned was that Kotone, in between a select few, was high enough on the eye-candy scale to warrant a few comments on her appearance, though not as hefty as the way people spoke of Aki, Mitsuru or Yukari Takeba which, as he’d figured out, was the other member of SEES. In fact, most times he’d hear Kotone’s name it came mingled in between conversations of one or all of the three – it was one of the dazzling perks of being cobbled up in the same dorm as the school’s idols. He’d know. He’d been there.

It struck him as odd at first that a lot of her appraisal from other students related to what he considered to be some very average traits. Like Aki had told him before, Kotone had a reputation of being a bit of a ‘yes-man’ (though the word he heard most was ‘pushover’), but she was also, supposedly, high-spirited, hyper, smart, a bit of a teacher’s pet, charismatic and…so on and so forth.

But then it stood to reason that for most it was merely confusing to untangle her personality traits beyond the tips that weren’t knotted in ambiguity. The lack of consensus on the details was apparent: some mouths had her as violent but passionate, others as cute, amicable and empathetic and others as an overly saccharine person with her fangs out for every pretty boy in the area. She could be both Buddha reincarnate and Rosemary’s child for all he knew.

In part, one plausible, logical hypothesis had him rationalizing that her eager to please attitude coupled with the fact that she was constantly surrounded by big names of Gekkoukan’s social echelon, had gathered her friends and foes alike. Foes as in the kind of distrustful people that stood baffled as she managed to grasp more than three minutes of an actual conversation out of someone like Mitsuru and immediately wagered that she must’ve gotten her hands on a pretty hefty amount of her closeted skeletons to threaten her with. He’d know. He’d _been there_.

All the gossip did his head in and muddied the way he knew he had felt towards her at some point. It wasn’t unreasonable, seeing as they’d only managed an actual conversation once, but he thought... Fuck, screw it. He thought nothing. That one conversation hadn’t been sane in the least, not by any stretch of the imagination, and he’d been insane to have gleaned something from it, to have found a sliver of a comparison between them.

The sun was well on its path to setting when Shinjiro boarded the train back to Port Island Station, on his way back from Naganaki Shrine with a half-empty bag of dog chow in tow. His thoughts veered from his current stomach ache to the pups at the shrine which he knew for sure were being led by the albino Shiba Inu, Koromaru. Though he couldn’t prove it, he was fairly sure Koromaru was the main honcho, the de facto leader of the group of strays, rounding up all the starving dogs in the vicinity. More than once he heard Koromaru’s tale from the housewives that came to visit him at the shrine, often bringing snacks or full on meals as offerings to the loyal guardian of Naganaki, the one who remained when his owner did not.

He was a good boy.

It was in this dreamy like state of mind, with half a brain in the clouds of canine heaven, that he stepped out of the train shuttle and down the steps of the Station. Well on his way across the station plaza and down the stairs of the alleys he heard a small gasp, a rapid set _tap-tap-taps_ echoing his way and suddenly his path was blocked by a familiar face.

“Hi!” Kotone exclaimed.

His guts twisted into knots. Since last time, his impression of her had wildly swerved from left to right and then to everywhere else in the spectrum, leaving him with an esoteric perception of this person whom he’d once thought had a vein of relatability with him, but now wasn’t so sure. She stood on the last step of the small stairway and he stood a few steps above her – their height difference should’ve been overwhelming yet it was him who felt cramped, as bothered as that moment at the café when her stare sent shivers down his spine. It was disorienting. He needed to think this through better.

Shinjiro nudged her to the side, walking past her down the stairs. He would’ve resumed his walk and life would’ve moved on if not for the gentle way in which she tugged at his sleeve by the elbow, expression determined despite the slight furrow of her brows. Even then, with him fully down the stairs and her perched on the bottom step, her face still had to turn upwards to face his. Her smile was tight. Her eyes still bothered him.

Not really knowing what to do, he yanked his arm away with a bit more force than he’d intended and stared down at her and her awkward smile before gracing her with his voice: “What do you want?”

“Harsh.” She said. “How’ve you been?”

He clicked his tongue, glancing back at the way she came from and then back at her again. “I thought I told you to stay away from here.”

“I’m only _near_ the entrance this time, so everything’s fine.”

“You never went past the entrance last time either, idiot.”

“Oh yeah…” She blinked. “So much went down I hardly had time to think it through. I still feel bad, that you had to see us like that.”

“Got that right.”

“Thank you for that.” She scratched the tip of her nose, but in spite of the supposed embarrassment her poise remained the same. “It was…pretty scary.”

He sighed, his anger cooling down and leaving behind tired ashes. “Pretty dumb.”

Perhaps having noticed something changed, she winked at him. “Pretty and dumb?”

He almost smirked. “Mostly dumb.”

But she smiled a bit more openly then, a bit more at ease, as if somewhere in his lines she’d found a place of comfort, even if minimal, wherein she could grasp at a conversation. He didn’t like it. “Pretty and dumb it is.” She repeated, _teasing him_ , and Shinjiro realized that despite having had zero intentions to, he’d been roped into the beginnings of a conversation.

His first reaction was one of pure, unmitigated, animosity. He reeled it back a notch, dialed back his antagonism towards mild enmity and huffed through his nose whatever intense sentiments were abruptly burning under the surface of his skin. His body reflexively reacted as if he was in the presence of an assailant, muscles taut and teeth clenched, with his senses attentive to the way she moved, spoke, _stared_ at him.

Of course she noticed that something was amiss. Kotone had her mouth open with something more to say, but shut it under the look he had her in. But her smile didn’t drop and instead of confusion (or, he wished, apprehension) she searched his face with concern. “You’re mad at me.” She stated. “You’re…anxious?” She concluded.

Castor reserved her one glance before deeming her a threat, recalling the fact that she certainly knew more than she let on as reason enough to keep him on his toes and yet making use of the same example to prove just how much of a stunning irregularity she was for it to be absurd to shoo her away. His Persona was curious, a morbid type of curiosity that had Shinjiro wondering if Castor too also ached under the tight strings of destiny, or at least panged it enough for it to seek out a deeper understanding. And then he fought back that thought and stupidly reminded himself that _they were one and the same_ , him and the manifestation of his soul.

Kotone shifted in place. “You’re, uhm, you…” She looked down at her feet, stepping over the tips of her shoes before raising her head again. “You don’t trust me..?”

Acrimony and fascination. He sought to deepen the conversation that they left interrupted at the café yet fumed at the smallest of hints that it was all a ploy – to be in control, to play him as a fiddle – probably knowledgeable that he wouldn’t have the foresight to see the ends of her means. It could be that she was in cahoots with SEES to get him to come back, or maybe the sentiment was as petty as to just get closer to Akihiko. But even that seemed far-fetched – the world didn’t revolve around him, he’d already known that since childhood, so why had it seemed like that with her?

When his answer took too long to come she shifted her weight, probably skittish that the conversation wasn’t flowing the way she’d intended to, seeing as he’d tensed up instead of loosening, as she’d clearly intended. “…senpai?”

“I’m not your senpai.” He snapped, suddenly awake. She didn’t so much as flinch, but her demeanor changed. She looked the same but didn’t feel the same, with that damned _smile_ hitting all of his nerves. He was reminded of the rumors surrounding her, both the version of her that brightened the room with a smile and the one that ate babies for breakfast.

**_In distrusting the dark we are kept from falling._ **

With too much on his mind he started to leave, but again she stopped him. The hand on his arm was less gentle this time, a bit more forceful, showing off a bit more of the strength that he knew a leader of SEES should possess, and suddenly she wasn’t just Kotone, but a persona user that could see beyond the metatextual and had snowballed a conversation with him in which she ‘let slip’ how both their fates were tied with death flags.

This time he didn’t pull his arm away, but leaned in. From an outsider’s perspective the gesture may have seemed intimate, with his face way too close to her own, but his voice was laced with malignity and the way he gripped the railing beside her denoted anything but tactfulness. “Let go.” The back of his hands itched. “Now.”

She stood there, still as a statue, until her fingers unhooked from his coat and her hand found solace on the hem of her shirt. If he didn’t know any better, he’d think she _wasn’t_ acting sheepish on purpose.

“Good girl.” He leaned back and adjusted his sleeve with a roll of his shoulder, more out of principle than actual need. The Dark Hour was hours away but Castor was already snappy. Though not yet the right time, he felt the need to indulge in suppressants, surely the first thing he’d do as soon as he stepped foot in his apartment.

But he never got that far. She gripped his arm for a third time, for the third and _last_ time, he swore, soul boiling for release and brain steadfast in coming with a quick way to redirect his anger in a way that didn’t involve physical violence for the first time – which was crazy because he was sure he’d never felt his temper flare as much as it did at that moment but she was barely over half his size and he wouldn’t hit a girl would he? – and then she _head-butted_ him.

She honest-to-goodness yanked him down in a move that he never saw coming and was as such wholly unprepared to fight against and without any wind up motion hit her forehead square onto his and **_fuck_** it felt terrible, because he was fine. He was fine and dandy and she looked as if she’d just slammed her face onto a brick wall with how red the space between her eyebrows looked.

She stumbled back with her eyes scrunched up in pain and would’ve fallen if his brain wasn’t in enough of a daze to stupidly drop the dog food and catch her back while his other hand rose for her to steady herself against. She impulsively reached for it on her own, grabbing his forearm while wavering forth. “ _Ow_ …”

He couldn’t help it, he _snorted_ – and the noise came out foreign and embarrassing and he quickly hid it behind taut lips.

In one mortifying second he remembered that the world was not just inhabited by the both of them but a quick side glance spared him the chagrin by revealing that their only, semi-close company was the skinny, elderly cat that the good natured people of the alleys had adopted as a sort of mascot for the place. He became extremely aware of how _stupid_ they looked and his face reddened into a scowl, though not as angry as he was before. “You _dumbass_!”

She heard him. A remarkable feat seeing as her brain was probably rattled off of its stem. There was annoyance in her tone and her smile was gone, having shifted into a frown, something he didn’t immediately know how to deal with. Was this what he’d wanted? “ _You’re_ the dumbass!”

He didn’t know what his face emoted because he himself wasn’t sure of what emotion to let out after being on the receiving end of the playground-version of an insult in the form of a ‘ _no, you_ ’. “The fuck’s wrong with you?”

“I’m trying to get your attention! Why’re you being like this?”

“Because-” He stopped. In his mushed brain the explanation had been simple and pretty straightforward and she would’ve undoubtedly understood as if they were full sentences whatever he’d chose to put into a few words, but in the grand scheme of things he didn’t know whether his suspicions had ever held any validity or were just the convoluted beliefs of a guy who’d been involved in way too many uncanny shenanigans to not realize when his head was growing mold from how deep inside his own ass it was. Gleaming over everything with a ‘ _sorry, but I suffer from heavy center-of-the-universe syndrome and I really do think that everything you’ve done so far was just so you’d catch my attention’_ wouldn’t fucking cut it.

He’d have to add how he’d felt as though the world was out to get his head on a silver platter and his organs fashioned into ribbons to grimly decorate the lives of everyone else. Weeks of ‘coincidental’ meet-ups with both her and Aki had left him privy to the certainty of fate, inescapable no matter how much he wished it to be, no matter how much he wished to live independently of unexplainable sections of time between one day and the next and all that that entailed even though he _couldn’t_.

And then he’d have to follow that up by trying to explain that his life wasn’t his, that it had stopped being his the moment he killed Ken’s mom, or the moment he followed Akihiko to the dorm, or the moment he connected with the Sanada siblings way back when and forged an attachment that would ultimately tie him to Castor or, _fuck_ , maybe Castor was the one that led him there but, no, that couldn’t be, right? Was he born to just die?

Castor was destined to die because its lore was intrinsically connected its death and its life had mostly served as the stepping stone from which Polydeuces rose in glory. Castor was destined to die and he was destined to die with it; _he knew this_ – it was inevitable – and yet he didn’t want that to be **_who_** _he was_. But it was also who he was – inescapable – and the sooner he got that fact into his thick skull the faster he could own up to his responsibilities instead of hiding away like a wimp. Even if the universe had granted him a bad spot he was still the one that in the past had acted as if the future didn’t matter, as if he was too big for it, and then Ken’s mom died and he had to _atone,_ with no space for deliberation or refuge – but, at the same time, why should he be allowed to? Wasn’t he already on the path of extinction? Wasn’t his soul already in purgatory? _Wasn’t his corpse already under the tightrope?_

“ _Shinjiro_!”

Kotone grabbed him by the cloth of his chest and shook him the best she could, which wasn’t saying much. He stopped his mulling in time to realize that his open answer had been the same as leaving her with another playground-level way of finishing an argument, like the child that he was, even when he sought out not to be. He wanted to laugh, hysterically, but then his stomach lurched and assaulted him with a wave of nausea.

He tore himself from her and swerved his body to the side just in time to heave out his entire stomach. His body shook so much with the effort that he had to lean his hand against the wall for leverage. Beside him Kotone gasped and muttered something that he couldn’t hear and her distress was probably the only thing still keeping him grounded. His vision had a black vignette and soon enough he thought his sense of touch was failing him too because the wall was fuzzy and soft even though it certainly wasn’t.

Just when he thought he’d lose it Kotone gently rubbed his back in circles before waving a half-empty bottle of water in his line of sight. “I’m sorry I’m so sorry” she kept repeating, as if this had been her fault. Which maybe it was, he thought, until it dawned on him how inevitable the whole thought process had felt.

Castor watched the display with rapt interest.

He took the bottle and straightened up, already calmer than before. “I’m fine.” He told her after a big swig. He said it like he meant it, but couldn’t stop the sway of his first step onto what he deemed had been a very wobbly piece of ground. “Stop looking at me like that.”

“Like what?” She had the audacity to be cheeky, her face regaining that same tight smile from before – but he didn’t miss the slight quiver from her lips, proving that there was more there than just pleasantries and misguided comfortableness. “Please, senpai, come sit down.”

He followed her, feeling too woozy to complain. He let her take his arm and guide him towards the closest of the benches on the plaza, wherein he sat without fanfare, even if a little begrudgingly. Twilight was dim in the horizon and it bothered him that despite the warm edges of an approaching summer he still felt cold, possibly numb, at his fingertips. Maybe he really was sick – there had been so much going on, he’d never pondered on that even being possible.

If he’d dedicated more of his brain to really think it through he would have realized that he’d never gotten sick in his life, not really. He’d been born to last, up until the abrupt moment wherein he wouldn’t. He could count in one hand the number of times he’d been admitted to a hospital and they’d all been due to injury. Not even in his worst times, not even when he’d been homeless, had he ever suffered through the malaise of the common cold.

But the more he spent demanding his brain to function the noisier the buzz grew from the inside. His stomach was still in shambles and the fowl taste on his mouth wasn’t doing him any favors so he tried to take a swig out of the bottle before realizing it was empty. Kotone, who’d been absent through his cool-down, suddenly brushed her fingers to his cheek, making him jump back. The movement made him groan, as if he still had anything to throw up except bile and what remained of his dignity. “Sorry.” She said, again, annoying him, until his attention was diverted to the bottle of fizzy water in her hand. “There’s not much more I can buy around here” she admitted, noticing his stare. “So drink this for now and wait here while I go find a pharmacy.”

“Don’t”, he forced out.

“I’ll be quick! I know where-”

“Just sit down.” He demanded, or at least he thought he’d demanded but his voice must have sounded weak even to her ears. She scrunched up her nose, seemingly miffed, showing more of those so called emotions. He took the bottle from her hands and motioned to his left with his head, towards the empty side of the bench. “My neck’s hurtin’ from lookin’ up.”

She crossed her arms. “Well now you know how the rest of us feel.” Still, she sat down like he’d asked. He knew that she wanted to keep probing him about his well-being by the way she kept furtively sneaking glances his way, while at the same time being patient enough to let him be the one to initiate the conversation.

He took one sip of water and leaned down with his elbows on his knees. It wasn’t that he was testing her patience, he just wanted to make sure that his voice sounded clearer, less unsure, and that his body stopped quivering. The sea breeze wafted through the buildings of the island and hit his nose, teasing him with a sneeze. Despite his thoughts on the matter, Kotone was dressed with a light orange t-shirt and a white skirt, which confused him, so he kept his mouth shut for a little longer and took another sip of his water. He could see from the corner of his eye how she was itching to say something but as soon as she opened her mouth he replaced her words with his instead: “What were you doing here?”

She looked at him, _really_ looked at him, though maybe the authenticity of her stare had always been there if he had only bothered to fully look back. Finally, she chuckled, like remembering what she’d come to do was the same as digging through yesterday’s memories. “Work, I guess.”

“You guess?”

She didn’t elaborate it further at first and her ambiguity was near teeth grating, but he held it in. “I was working part time at Screen Shot.”

He’d feel slightly miffed at how easy she made getting money seem if he wasn’t currently being well paid at a nice enough, even if suspicious, establishment. “And then you went to the alleys.”

“I just wanted to pet that cat.”

He’d take her word on it, for now. It was a very cute cat. “And your shift ended just as I was passing by.” He wasn’t angry, not really, just tired of coincidental happenings.

“No…” She cleared her throat. “I was waiting around for you.”

He squinted at her, spaced out, mouth slightly pulled to one side. “Why? How’d you know I was even gonna be here?”

She scratched the tip of her nose. “I didn’t. I just hoped I could find you one day.”

His brain did the equivalent of a record scratch. “ _One day_?”

“Haha, yeah. I’ve been waiting around…sometimes. Not every day, just,” she was squeamish under his glare, “sometimes.”

“You **_what_**.”

There was redness to her cheeks that she couldn’t hide even if she wanted to. Her face was so pale that any shift in skin tone was extremely noticeable. “I wanted to talk! But you never came back to Chagall and all I knew was that you were at the alleys sometimes. I tried asking my boss where you worked but her lips were zipped shut.” She saw him inhale and was quick to defend herself. “I know I’m not supposed to know that stuff! I think I got, I don’t know, _excited_. You don’t know how tempted I was to ask Akihiko-senpai.” She raised her arms, already expecting his flare-up. “I didn’t! And I won’t! It’s hard to know when you’re cool with each other or not sometimes. I’m not stepping into that.”

His first instinct, admittedly defensive, was to ridicule her, until he realized how surreal this turn of events was and how uncanny his day could still stand to become even before the 25th hour. He couldn’t discern if he was still cross with her or if he held enough space in his skeptical heart to allow her words to become truths. “Excited to what, talk about death flags n’ shit?”

“When you put it like that…” She chuckled. “I guess I was excited to get to know you better. I’ve never met anyone like you.”

“Sure.” He doubted that, wondered what she wanted from him to be acting this affably even after he treated her like she was a cockroach on the pavement.

“You don’t believe me.”

He openly stared at her, confronting her, and while he made sure to pin her with his stare, throwing back the same game that she seemed proficient at playing, she actually averted her gaze. He didn’t much care.

Notwithstanding this petty sense of victory over her usual shining confidence, he continued to analyze her like so. He let his sight roam her pallid face: from the small bruise between her eyebrows to the bags under her eyes, right down to the pinkish hue around her nose. He took note of how, now that his vision was clear of bitter filters, her breaths were shallow and needy. She moved to speak but changed her mind and it was noticeably easier to see how languidly she moved, her demeanor fazed by something other than mere tiredness. He was sure that if he were to touch her forehead he’d find it a bit warmer than it should.

The way she started gnawing her bottom lip was disconcerting him, drawing his attention further in, like a colorful predator. He had half a mind to keep his hands to himself, but couldn’t say the same about his eyes, still openly fixated on every little thing that he could surmise from her actions. Inevitably their gaze met again and she stopped worrying her lip, deciding upon a more serious expression, like a mask falling into place – boring, fabricated.

“Stop that.” He told her.

But Kotone had already settled in with her theatrics. She cocked her head to the side, smiling (stale, fake): “Stop what?”

He didn’t answer. For all he cared, she could surmise from his words whatever meaning she’d like them to have.

For a second too long Kotone acted as expected, tightly smiling and acting out a charming scene wherein one of her eyebrows raised and the other stayed down, but she quickly regretted it. For the next couple of seconds a frown lightly twisted her lips, so he prepared himself for a string of sly comment that never came, because she was quick to drop that too. Her face returned to zero before she put her hands on her hips and rolled her eyes, but that too only lasted mere seconds and soon her face turned blank again – no, almost blank, he noted.

Then, she properly looked at him. Her eyes were downcast, tired and confused, and her scratchy voice only served to accentuate the fatigue he’d figured she’d been hiding. His heart tightened at the sight and he almost faltered, though if he did so he was sure that all of this weirdness had been for naught.

At the very least he’d try and be truthful with her too, to try and get a good enough of a response in return. “That night, with your friends.” She nodded, listening. “Did you know I’d come to get you out of trouble?”

She mulled over his question. It wasn’t so much that her silence betrayed her answer but more so that it betrayed to her his own suspicion on the matter: the reason why he’d reserve her enmity when they met earlier.

The silence made the way she sniffled seem loud, though clearly because of her cold and not because she was out to get sympathy from him. He appreciated that. Despite his edged stare, if she knew how softer he could stand to get he’d probably vow to never see her again.

When she spoke it was as if a weight had been lifted off of his shoulders. “I had no idea you’d be there. I only knew you hung out at the alleys after that night, not before.”

“So you still lied to me, because you’re actually shortsighted and all that about seeing things outside the frame was a load of bull. I mean, a place like that, without a plan, really?”

She chuckled, a sad little thing. “I guess I didn’t explain myself very well. It’s a hard thing to explain!”

“Try me.”

There was a pause as she collected her thoughts. “I can’t see the future, only the branches that a present action _may have_ in the future, mine or others’. And even that’s not certain, but more like dealing with a crappy television antennae – wait, yeah, it’s like TV static: sometimes I get a nice enough signal and the transmission comes clear, but most times it’s just a headache.” She shifted in place. “The signal comes from the moment. Sometimes someone does something telling and the broadcast gives me choices, different channels to pick from, and flipping through those channels I can faintly see the probable consequences. Some are more certain than others, though.” She shifted again. “Am I making any sense?”

He pondered for a bit. “What kinds of channels?” She didn’t seem to like that question. “What?”

Her mood was apologetic, apologizing for things she hadn’t even said. On the street lamp beside them a moth was hitting the glass again and again and the ‘ticking’ sound it made as it slammed its tiny body was giving him a headache. He hadn’t even realized that the lights had turned on.

For the moment, he decided, he’d let the question go unanswered. “So, you saw my channel.”

“Yeah… Death is, hum, it’s…” She was fidgeting. “The ‘signal’ comes clearer when it’s about death, as if the universe is bad at hiding all these death flags that it’s put into place. That feeling is distinct, like a cold hand is palming the back of my neck, but I don’t know any specifics like time or place.”

“Does it happen a lot? Sensing those death flags.”

She shook her head. “No.”

“But you felt it with me?”

“Yes.”

“What did I do that was, you know, _telling_?”

“I don’t think I should tell you that.” He breathed an ‘ _of course_ ’ that she was quick to respond to. “I’m sorry. I’ve never had to explain this to anyone, but I know that some things are better off unsaid.”

“’S fine.” He grunted, staring at the moth.

But Kotone was anything but fine. “That night, the choices I made, I _did_ manipulate the situation. I didn’t know you’d come, but my friends, I-” She scratched her head and he furrowed his brows. She laughed. “You’re right to not trust me.”

“…go on.”

“I urged them on. Went as far as exploiting Junpei’s ego to get him to come along, asking him if he’d protect us – of course he’d agree to that, he’s cool like that.” She sighed and her tiredness seemed to grow tenfold. “I thought we could handle it, but it didn’t settle in how much of a mistake it was until he got socked in the liver.”

Her ‘choices’ did seem to edge over the manipulative. He nodded, pensive over metaphorical TV screens loaded with decisions that allowed her to pick from visions of a probable future. “A pretty stupid thing to do.”

“Pretty stupid.” She chuckled before leaning forward, elbows on her knees, propping her forehead in her hands. “A sizably stupid thing to do. The others don’t seem to realize the extent of my mistake, they don’t blame me for encouraging it, but I know what I did. As field leader I should know better than to-” Her head shot up to look at him. “Sorry, I don’t know how much I can talk about that too.”

He almost laughed. So they _haven’t_ been talking about him. “I used to be a part of SEES, ‘s fine.”

She mouthed a small ‘ha!’, eyes wide, as if she’d suspected it all along, before deeming her reaction inappropriate and settling down again. It made him chuckle. Thankfully, she didn’t ask him why he left. “So you know I’ve taken Akihiko-senpai’s place.” She ruminated. “Does that…peeve you?”

“Heh, peeve.”

“I said what I said.” She sounded annoyed (lively, sincere).

He leaned back and propped his ankle on his knee, arms crossed, bottle of water forgotten near his foot. “Couldn’t care less.” Probably feeling that his stance spoke volumes more than his voice, she dropped the subject.

The night was shaping out to be a quiet one. The moon was almost fully hidden behind the sky, with only a sliver of it ricocheting light. Though the mood was awkward and the conversation had all the signs of it being over, Kotone was still up for a chat. “How are you feeling?” She was acting polite again, but her smile felt different enough that he let her be. He wondered if both his better understanding of her character and her change in attitude towards him meant that they were already on steady grounds for a relationship of any sort and realized that he had no idea. Nearly all of his friendships had come from a position of spatial confinement, like the orphanage or the school, so he wasn’t sure. And also, forging ‘friendships’ sounded corny as hell.

Her continuous sniffles filled in the silence and his curiosity got the better of him: “Why are you so sick all the time? You were like that last time too, at the café. Probably worse now.”

She shrugged. “I’m on a strict work regimen. Got no time to rest.”

“You talkin’ ‘bout Tartarus or your handful of side jobs?”

“Both.” _Sniff_. “And some other things.”

He was reminded of exam week, making him point out without a hint of irony that “You’re absurd.”

She looked at him like _he’d_ sprouted a new head. “Everything’s absurd. I shoot personas out of my _brain_.” Before he could snootily correct her use of plurals she spoke again. “Besides, I like having things to do, otherwise it feels like there’s stuff I’m missing out on.”

After being silent for so long Castor startled him with a cackle so loud that he couldn’t help but flinch in place. It knocked on his ribcage in wild amusement, signaling for him to pay attention and maybe gain some good habits for once. He coughed to disguise his surprise but when Kotone turned to look at him again he interrupted her concern with a quip of his own, blurting out the first thing that came to mind. “If it’s to keep your mind off of things you don’t need to frame it as ‘not missing out on stuff’.” She raised a brow and he felt like digging a hole.

“That’s… cute.”

Heat rushed to the tips of his ears, though he was unsure if it was out of spite or embarrassment. “The hell you mean by that?”

“You’re worried!” She had one cheek smooshed up against her palm. “Last time, when you told me to get some rest because I ‘looked like a ghost’ I thought you were being rude for the sake of being rude, but you were actually worried!”

He huffed, hands deep in his pockets. “Forget I asked.”

Her smile lingered in his head until he looked at her again and saw it faded, somewhat, like she’d struggled to keep it up but ended up halfway with her lips pressed in a line. “If I tell, you wouldn’t babble on me, would you?”

“Whatever.”

“Ah, you _would_ tattle me to Akihiko-senpai.”

He grunted.

For a moment she seemed to be considering whether to tell him not. “There’s this photo...” She started and his body reflexively leaned forward. The reddish bruise between her knotted brows made it feel as if it was throbbing. She let out a weak laugh, trying to make sense of the situation. “Never mind. My head’s just fuzzy.”

He felt as if he should do something comforting, like place a hand on her shoulder, or utter a set of well thought-out, reassuring words, but in the end he was unable to. He had no way to work around giving her reassurance on anything, too dull to muster up words of wisdom and too much of a coward to initiate physical contact. That last one was still a big point of contention for him – with the exception of the strays he often petted, he had no memory of the last time he touched someone without it being accidental or without the intent to harm. So he took the coward’s route, and shifted the conversation. “I don’t doubt it, after the stunt you pulled.” Still, he grabbed the bottle by its neck and gently nudged it against her forehead. She blinked at first, surprised. “It’s still cold.” He said.

She took it, fingers slow in wrapping around the glass, which in turn made him take longer to let go. “I didn’t know what else to do. You kept looking at me like I was about to eat you whole.” She winced when the bottle hit a sore spot. “You have boulders for brains.”

“Better than nothing.”

“I’m sure it is.” She stuck her tongue out at him and then added, sincerely: “Sorry that it made you nauseous.”

He rubbed his face with the palm of his hand and waved at her to let go of the whole ordeal.

After a moment’s pause, she continued, her eyes on the sky. “Tensions are high on the dorm; there’s a lot going on with everyone. Actually, it’s not just the dorm – everyone’s on edge. The Lost certainly aren’t making it any easier.” She groaned. “A stranger wandered into Tartarus.” She deadpanned and he groaned something akin to a vocal question mark, disbelief clogging his throat. “Don’t ask me how I know, it’s confusing enough as it is. We’re gonna go in tonight, of course, but Tartarus is on edge too, growing more and more intense with each level we clear. In my current state we have to be quick, in and out, or I might infect them, because disease spreads easily during the Dark Hour.” She rapidly blinked. “But if I go alone… Mhm, in and out...”

He made a face.

“I mean, of course I wouldn’t do that.”

The night was young, ripe enough for him to get all the shuteye that he could before it was time to close the bar, yet not nearly as young for Kotone to rest. The night, though she didn’t seem to feel it that way, was also cold, uninviting – his hands were in his coat pockets, playing with a loose end of a string that kept him busy through his aggravating thoughts as he contemplated them further. For a split second he considered inviting her to his home, to his personal space, and spare her a moment of quietude for her to rest in, but that idea was neither sane for him nor for her, the girl with a stalker on her tail.

“I blabbed too much, huh?” She pondered aloud.

“You blabbed enough.” He answered brusquely, annoyed. His fidgeting stopped in favor of keeping a level head, pure from impetuous responses with which he had no intentions on following through. And yet… “Do you think about your death flags nearly as much as you think of others?” He asked.

She didn’t answer.

“You think about them all the time.” He answered for her. “That’s why you keep yourself busy.”

She recoiled into herself ever so slightly at the intrusion and chuckled. “Feels weird when it’s someone else probing my brain.”

He ignored her. “Do you know when?” The look she gave him warned him to steer clear of the topic, which in and of itself was answer enough. “Are you trying to speed up the process?”

“Shinjiro-”

“I’m reprimanding you.” He told her, matter-of-factly. “I’m also annoyed, because we’re the only ones aware of this and we’re both shit at dealing with fate, but that’s neither here nor there.” Behind them a train was moving to a halt at the Station. “Do you guys still have a dorm mother?”

“We had a dorm mother!?”

With their ungodly schedule, it was a surprise the former dorm mother hadn’t left sooner. “Go to the dorm, eat whatever canned shit is in that pantry, tell your team to go get that lost soul or whatever and get some rest.” He stood up, ready to move on, for now. Unconsciously, he motioned for her to do the same and immediately regretted it when she did so with curious eyes. “Or go with them, I don’t care.”

The scarce footsteps coming down from the Station’s stairs allowed him room to breathe away from her curious stare and hints of a warmth that he was unused to. Her head turned towards the Station and she started to leave, but after just one step she turned to him once more. “You should try and do the same. Resting, I mean.” She laughed, tapping the tips of her shoes on the floor, as if adjusting them, but he saw through her need to pad the situation a little more when she started speaking again, circling a conversational roundabout. “I do know when I’m going to die.”

“I know.”

“Just making sure.” Her hands went behind her back. “Someone else told me.”

He closed his eyes for a brief moment, biting the inside of his cheek to last through his morbid curiosity. “We can talk some other time.”

Kotone gave him a mischievous look. “It’s, dare I say, a date?”

She was teasing him, expecting a reaction. Though amused, he feared that any more teasing on his part would only play into her hand, stretching her time with him until the train was no longer in sight. “No.”

Kotone nodded. At the sight of her retreating form Castor grew agitated, raising the hair on the back of Shinjiro’s neck. Castor demanded he go with her, clutching Shinji’s guts from the inside, trying to conduct him to move. Something wicked flared up his blood, stirring him away from how calm he’d been during their conversation – how he realized that he’d _been calm_ during that conversation. No random itches at the back of his hands, no nothing, only faint simmers of anger that he retroactively recognized as more of an annoyance towards the unknown. Maybe, perhaps, if he ought to meet her again-

Then there was something else, a vicious possessiveness that had Castor moving to squeeze his heart, pushing him to go, to protect. Begrudgingly, he admitted to himself that he’d rather have that wandering stranger survive for one lousy day in Tartarus than have her potentially die in it.

“No-” He murmured to no one but himself, cursing as Kotone turned to him for a last time, as if unsure if she’d even heard him speak. She wasn’t his to keep under the bed with fears of some kid coming to steal her away, as neither was Aki or Mitsuru or any other. She wouldn’t go out in flames, he was sure of that, it was merely bothersome that her tired eyes stirred in him unpleasant nightmares. “Come back safe.” The words stumbled out of his mouth before he could properly stop them, unsure of what else to say, becoming tense at her possible reaction towards this small opening of his, seeping with vulnerability. Sometimes, a moment of weakness was all it took, no matter how seemingly insignificant. He felt that, once she left, he would need to double the suppressants that restrained his persona from escaping into the Dark Hour.

“You have nothing to worry about, senpai.” She took two fingers to her temple, shaping her hand into a gun. “My persona is Orpheus, after all!”


	6. People Get Shot in Port Island

6/ 22 • M, Dark Hour

Sleep, as of late, had been seeking him out. His hands, as a result of tiredness and over indulgence in suppressants, were shaky and unstable, hard to ignore, and Tomio, ever watchful, had come to him around the fourth time in a row that he’d dropped tableware. “Do you need a break?”

But Shinjiro knew that his boss’ concern hid a vexed man, annoyed at the fact that one of his employees was acting unlike a professional – or worse, aware that one of his employees was on pills while on the job. “I’m fine.”

But with eyes as heavy as his he’d barely managed to hold himself up to his boss’ standards before Castor’s first tug at his gut told him the time was close to midnight. At that point Shinjiro had excused himself to his apartment with promises of a quick comeback but once at his place, after rechecking his watch to see just how close to the Dark Hour it actually was, he didn’t bother with anything else and simply lay on the floor of the main room, worrying himself just enough to set up an alarm for around two minutes after midnight. While he did so he took the second pill of that evening, aware that Castor, despite his drugged up state, wasn’t lying as low as it should.

When the walls started dripping blood, he slept, and through the Dark Hour and into the following day his sleep was uninterrupted by either nightmares or shadows that crept in from the sidelines of his vision. For a solid hour, he felt at peace.

-

6/ 23 • Tu, Early Hours

“You cool?”

He raised his eyes from the bar counter to look at his coworker. Truth be told, he hadn’t caught up to her name yet and he doubted that he ever would. His boss had semi-affectionately nicknamed her “Kyun” on her first night on the job but Shinji had reasoned it to be due to her request of anonymity and not so much because she made Tomio’s stomach flutter. He guessed. He wasn’t sure. His eyes slid down again and his focus skipped from the glass of water he’d been steadily sipping to a piece of stained wood that was way darker than the rest of the counter.

‘Kyun’ nudged aside a few bottles of liquor to lean over the counter and closer inspect his face. He was so tired that for a moment she was no more than a blur in his eyes, undistinguishable from the rest of the Bar. “Earth to Aragaki, is there something inside that head of yours worth being worried about?”

He languidly blinked and tried to focus on her face, but the contrast of a somber background against the yellow light from above the bar counter made his head throb. Though having soundly slept for a good hour, his eyelids still stuck closed for more than one second intervals and his mouth had already set a new yawning record. He answered with a hum and she replied in kind, accompanied by an expression that he didn’t appreciate, if only because it seemed to be hinting at something akin to an attempt at sultriness that he really wasn’t interested in. “Shouldn’t you be going home?” Tomio had already told her that her shift was over.

She shrugged. “Extra hours mean extra money.”

He hummed again.

But Kyun was persistent, attempting small talk whenever the patrons didn’t call for her, taking his short, distracted answers as more of a challenge than they should be. She inspected the Bar as a whole before turning to him once more, her voice barely above a whisper so as to not distract the handful of customers that still lingered on two different corner tables. “You’re lucky it’s a Monday. Or, I mean, Tuesday.” She giggled and let her head tilt sideways ever so slightly, inspecting him. “So, who’s been keeping you awake?”

He’d been distracted enough that the full subtext of her sentence didn’t hit him at first, all of his brainpower having gone towards not falling into the basic urge of insulting her mother. “Tomio has.”

She let out a laugh. “I don’t think he’s your type.”

He blinked rapidly, squinting as he did so.

Kyun was a pretty thing. Adorned with short, wavy, ashy blonde hair, soft brown eyes and a heart shaped face, she’d probably sway a few hearts with just a sly smile and a wink. Her choices in accessories, he noted, weren’t extravagant and eye-catching, but rather she kept things to a minimum, complementing her straightforward yet pleasant personality.

Her interests, however, were a bit all over the place, which he guessed was a normal way for infatuated people to act when trying to figure out what made the other _click_. Infatuated, perhaps, was a bit too strong of a word – attracted was more befitting. By this point in his life Shinjiro had served witness to enough of Aki’s and Mitsuru’s contenders making fools out of themselves in public to be able to discern when someone was on the act of pinning from a mile away. Why Kyun would’ve wanted anything to do with him, she herself probably had no idea, but it might have had something to do with his untouchable status around the alleys. Sometimes all you needed was a reputation and people would forget about your bruised knuckles and antagonizing face.

He recalled the high-schooler who’d approached Akihiko on that day at Hagakure Ramen. Shinjiro would never ask Kyun for her age, but he knew by sight alone that she was neither younger nor much older than him. Whatever had led her to find employment at Tomio’s joint was probably the only thing that nipped at his interest, but also probably the only thing that she wouldn’t be willing to openly share after only weeks of working under the same roof.

Though somewhat flattered (him? with admirers?) he’d have to admit that the most he got out of Kyun was an appreciation for keeping him from dozing off. “I don’t have a type.”

“Everyone has a type.” She grinned. “I bet I can figure yours.”

He thought about it for a second and then shrugged, giving her the ok. It served better than a stare-off with a stained piece of wood.

“Let’s see.” Kyun took her pointer finger to her chin in thought. “I bet it’s someone _feisty_. The type you can’t keep your eyes away for a second or they’ll start up trouble.”

He raised a brow. “Go on.”

“Probably full of energy to spare for, you know, a nice contrast. With an all-consuming hobby like… exercising all the time.”

She was _describing_ **_Aki_**. He groaned.

She giggled. “Or maybe it’s the restrained type. Someone who shows affection little by little, acting all cool, but let it all fall flat when you wink their way?”

That was just Mitsuru with extra steps. “Next.”

“A soft and cute person that you’d want to cuddle all the time?”

He knew no one like that. Unless it was a dog. “Next.”

“Hmmm…” Kyun searched the ceiling for a moment. “Oh! Maybe you’re into the controlling type of partner, a dom kind of situation.” At his face she giggled “You know, folk who like, need everything to go a certain way?”

…Chidori? He shivered, but couldn’t contain the dry laugh that rose up his throat at the image. (*)

“Aw Aragaki, you’re harder to figure out than I thought!” Kyun pondered for a moment longer, humming, before snapping her fingers in a ‘ah-ha!’ moment. “That’s it! You like mysterious types!”

He pondered. Without thinking, his fingers rose to graze his forehead, touching the space between his eyebrows. He groaned.

The sound of a giggle yanked him out of his trance. Kyun gave him a knowing look, one that had him rolling his eyes. “Did I get bingo?” She asked.

“Yes.” He drawled. His throat was raspy and dry. “Your prize is to take out the trash.”

Sensing the conversation had bumped into a wall, Kyun let out one final giggle and moved towards the back of the counter while pulling on the collar of her white blouse. “It’s so stuffy in here. I wish boss would turn on the ceiling fans already.” She bent down to pick up the garbage bag, already closed up. “I don’t know how you handle the heat with that sweater.”

“It’s-!”…not that hot, was what he was about to say, but his tone started off with a bit more forcefulness than he’d intended to and Kyun wasn’t being anything but genuine. And besides, the topic shouldn’t have vexed him as much as it did, even if the weather was, for sure, not _hot_. If anything, he wished he could put on his coat, his arms gaining goosebumps at just the thought of going outside without it.

The Mahjong Bar was quiet enough that the soles of Kyun’s shoes clacked on the floor as she left. In her absence the patrons could be heard in a clearer manner, their whispers denoting more than just an intense game but, rather, the exchange of pieces of information. ‘ _Business’_ , he thought.

In one of the two occupied tables sat his boss, luring in his companions with vague hand movements and a big ol’ smile, sometimes urging them into taking a sip of the newly acquired rosé he’d placed on an ice bucket to the side. The wine was never a recent acquisition, but indeed the result of a purchase en masse done way before Shinjiro even entered the scene, which made him wonder how the clients fell for it every time… or if it even mattered. Whatever subject of bargain was being struck was none of Shinjiro’s concerns – moreover, it was absolutely none of his interest, beyond hoping to get a cut of the results, that is.

After a while, Kyun slipped in with uncharacteristic silence. Though he couldn’t listen to what she leaned in to whisper to Tomio, it became clear that something wasn’t right when his boss shot a dubious look her way. He motioned for her to move along with a roll of his wrist and she nodded, walking towards Shinjiro before asking him to help her “check out their supplies in the back”.

“What’s wrong?” He asked once the door to the back room closed behind her, leaving them in a cramped space, too tight for two people to stand comfortably, what with its fully stacked shelves and seldom source of light.

Kyun’s hands found purchase on her hips, as if she was taking effort out of standing straight. Her face was a twinge paler than before. “The cops are outside.”

He sighed – he knew this would happen sooner or later. “Are we in trouble?”

“Trouble?” She repeated, confused, before letting out a nervous giggle. “They’re not here for Tomio.”

“Oh…?”

Her face quickly turned sullen again and she crossed her arms, staring at the ground. The air was stale and her forehead was lightly dabbed with sweat, though only noticeable after the overhead lightbulb blinked once, then twice. When she finally raised her head, the look she gave him was shaky. Panicked.

“…oh.”

Her voice was soft, barely above a whisper. “There’s a crime scene down there – there’s yellow tape blocking one the alleys not too far from here and there’s a handful of policemen patrolling the area. One of them came to ask me some questions and then sent me off. I think they’re trying to keep things quiet.” There was a pause. “They told me there was an ‘accident’ and someone got hurt.”

Shinjiro shifted his weight from one leg to the other. “And what do you think?”

“I think they’re searching for a culprit. The same one from last night.”

He nodded, pensive.

“What are you thinking?”

He shifted his weight again. It was too cold in this room. “We might have to close for a while.”

“Really, Aragaki?” Her voice faltered. “It’s the second night in a row – and this one was _close_!”

“We don’t know if it’s the same guy. Plus, you said the victim was fine, just hurt.”

“There was an _ambulance_!” 

“Look, there’s nothing we can do. The cops are out there patrolling the place and after tonight they’ll reinforce their numbers.” He groaned, scratching his scalp. “Everyone’s been on edge lately too, freaking out about those apathy cases.” She gave him an incredulous look. “What?”

“Aren’t you scared?”

“Scared of what?”

“Of **dying** , you moron!”

He was taken aback. Of course that, though highly unusual, murder was certainly not unexpected in a place like the alleys of Port Island, Iwatodai’s own version of hell. Like a bubble ready to pop, it was inevitable that one day the culmination of street violence and unquenched antagonism between the regulars would result in someone going too far. Add the fluctuating numbers of The Lost and his assumptions only gained added validity. Not to mention that, as he’d reasoned a long time ago, the whole city was in a position of demise. Why was there a need to act surprised when shit inevitably went down?

The shadows, Tartarus itself…Iwatodai reeked of impending doom, the question remaining should only be in what day they’d mark the apocalypse on their calendars. Port Island itself was so often wrought with the unusual that, though unsure about the day, it only made sense that the Armageddon was to have its battleground in Gekkoukan High, smack-dab in the middle of the commotion.

Kyun, having apparently given up on the conversation, took a step forward and caught him off guard by leaning her forehead onto his shoulder and he almost flinched at the contact. Her form was shaking, something that he felt more than he saw, the light of the back room too dim and his height too tall, shielding it from reaching her.

…of course, his coworker wouldn’t share his viewpoint. Almost no one knew of the 25th hour.

Maybe his attitude was less than ideal, too distant and frigid. A murder was a murder, still – yesterday a person that existed had suddenly ceased to exist by someone else’s immoral, self-indulgence. Tonight the same might’ve happened. It was a scary thought to have – death, natural or not – though not an unfamiliar topic for someone like Shinjiro, whose own journey towards such matters began long ago.

Though it was to be expected it wasn’t as if everyone should conform to a life of insecurity, of constantly looking over their shoulder. Unpleasantness rolled around in the back of his stomach.

“I’ll take you home.” He suddenly said, eyes focused on the ceiling. Kyun nodded slightly and murmured a ‘thank you’ but Shinjiro still felt, to his chagrin, detached from her predicament. Should he pat her back? Would that be too childish? He was never good with this sort of thing. He’d be better suited for the job if the problem were a shadow: a palpable, half-brained, lump of physical nothings that dissipated after a couple of hits.

Suddenly, two thoughts crossed his mind: there had been no commotion outside, no audible signs of a struggle; and the Dark Hour had come and gone, faster than usual, because he had slept through it.

Shinjiro’s eyes widened. Those were the sort of musings that he shouldn’t allow more room to breathe, else he wouldn’t feel sane for the foreseeable future.

But though he rationalized it that way, his head was slowly filling up with mud. He was starting to suffocate, there was a ringing so strong in his ears that he had no process to bypass it and the need to cough was all-encompassing but if he started he knew he wouldn’t stop. At the same time, if he didn’t let the noise leave from somewhere, he’d have to live with it for the rest of his miserable life and-

**_Fate keeps dealing us coincidental happenings._ **

‘ _Hm?_ ’

**_You are not at fault._ **

He felt his posture relax. Finally, he patted Kyun’s shoulder and murmured to himself: “We might have to close for a while.”

-

6/ 23 • Tu, Evening

“I’ll have what he’s having.”

Shinjiro contained himself just in time to turn his blow on the counter into an awkward smack of sorts, ending up palming the wooden surface with his whole hand. Hagakure Ramen’s cook turned to look at him as if expecting another order, but Shinjiro tried (and failed) into playing it cool by faking a cough. Embarrassingly, for a guy who got caught in a coughing fit at least once every goddamn day as of late, he flunked the act pretty hard.

The cook raised an eyebrow but soon returned towards the bowl he was preparing. “Coming right up!”

Akihiko sat beside Shinji with absolute poise, the bastard; crossing one knee over the other and placing his jacket on top of his legs. “…How can you eat the same thing all the time, without getting sick of it?”

That was rich, coming from him. “Shut up. You always eat that protein shit.”

Aki let out a “Hmph…”, though Shinjiro failed to see if he was actually offended at his rather mediocre jab.

The cook turned to Aki, placing a bowl of Ramen in front of him. “Here you go, one house special! Be careful, it’s hot!”

In the corner, the TV displayed the latest news concerning Iwatodai. Of course, the main topic of the day had been the attack on the pedestrian at the alleys, his gun wound too similar to the one that had killed another man, two nights before. Though the latest victim was alive, the news reported that the loss of blood had been immense and, as a result, the victim’s time was mostly spent sleeping, recovering. Whenever he’d awoken enough to coherently give a report to the officers, his recollection of events was lost in a jumble of nonsensical explanations, probably as a result of trauma.

Akihiko suddenly flinched, sucking in a breath through his teeth. It was an unusual enough of a reaction that Shinjiro turned to him with a flinch of his own, too caught up in gun wounds and talks of coma induced cures to immediately notice that Akihiko had simply burnt his tongue on the noodles. “…Yow, he wasn’t kidding.”

Shinjiro sighed. The air was uncomfortable and stuffy and though his relationship with Aki hadn’t been in the best of tides for a while, their last conversation had felt heavier than most, one he almost regretted. ‘Almost’ being the right word, because his decision of pushing Aki to live his own life hadn’t crumbled yet – he just needed to figure out how to stop these _damn coincidental meetups from happening_.

After eating in silence for a while, he noticed Aki hadn’t taken more than a few bites from his meal and his decision to stay out of it nearly wavered. Was he eating proper at the dorm? Without a dorm mother he probably wasn’t eating enough vegetables to balance out his meat-filled diet. Should he bring him food from time to time?

Akihiko stirred the ramen in his bowl and the words out of his mouth: “…You still haven’t made up your mind?”

It seemed normal that, in the midst of the ‘goading Shinjiro into a conversation’ trenches, Aki would fall into repeating the same old question he’d by then turned into a custom. A Kotone Shiomi, he lamely thought, Aki was not. But at its corner the TV was still on a roll, laying out every minute detail that the journalists could get their hands on about the case. He remembered Kyun’s shaking form as she leaned against him in a cramped and badly lit back room. “…Is this what this is about?” He gestured towards the TV.

Akihiko played with the broth for a bit, messing with Shinjiro’s nerves. “We’ve got four new members. Things have changed quite a bit since you left. We’re more aggressive now.”

“I’m not interested.”

“Think about it Shinji.” Aki’s voice was levelled and, for a second time in a row, Shinji’s tongue almost wavered over reassuring words. “Don’t let your power go to waste.”

Shinjiro finished eating and leaned back, stretching his back, rolling his shoulders, before curving over the counter again. He almost sighed, though he guessed the time wasn’t right for him to act exclusively annoyed. “My power ain’t worth shit.” It was the truth – they were better off without his erratic ass.

“Shinji!”

“I made up my mind a long time ago. I ain’t going back.”

Panic was never one of Aki’s traits, not since the fire, so the way he steeled his gaze in contrast to the slight falter of his voice set off an alarm inside Shinji. Aki was being insistent, circling back around the topic instead of letting it die down. “You have to let the past go. What’s done is done. It’s time you moved on.” There was a hint of desperation urging Aki to be harsh and hurtful. His words contrasted how they’d tip-toed around the reason for Shinji's departure ever since he’d returned to Iwatodai, months ago, and for good reason:

In Shinjiro’s own tally of events he could count in one hand the number of times he’d started an actual fistfight with Aki. It’d been close to none, at least when compared to the sum of times Aki had decked him in the face with no warning. That didn’t mean that he hadn’t been tempted, but though he reveled in violence there was something about striking the first punch, hurting his friend like so, that broke his heart. As lame as it sounded, sometimes he’d rather they just talked, but conversation didn’t exactly come naturally to the both of them (go figure). Still, he’d wager that they could figure out the right expressions if they sought for them hard enough.

But Shinjiro knew, had accepted a long time ago, that for the both of them an exchange of words was nothing compared to the heat of a fight. It had always been the model approach for a reason – the resulting wounds would be superficial, would never cut as deep as an ushered truth would and their anger towards each other would only last as long as it took their skin to heal.

So sometimes Shinjiro wished that they could simply slip through the vines that threatened to entangle them in unnecessary idiosyncrasies and put thoughts into words, instead of fists, even if it would never be that simple.

On all other times he wished Aki would just shut his damn mouth about ‘ _letting go of the past_ ’ when he himself couldn’t do the same. On those times, if he chose to voice his anger instead of letting it pound against Akihiko’s face, his need for violence would border over masochism as he'd sneer out words that he knew would purposefully hurt more and he’d _revel_ in them.

Shinjiro barely ever struck the first punch, but he sure as shit itched for a fight. “Hmph… You should talk.”

“What?” Aki had his fist raised but no flame behind it, a boneless bravado by all means. It felt weird, like a puzzle piece that didn’t fit, and suddenly it didn’t feel right to start fighting an Akihiko that looked so unsure of himself. Sometimes – again, sometimes – they needed to talk, to cut deeper, and then maybe all the dirt that was left inside would have no choice but to gush out, leaving old wounds to heal proper again.

“Face it.” Shinji got up from his seat, ready to leave. “You’re no different than me.”

“Ah…” Aki rapidly blinked. “Hey! Shinji!”

Shinjiro threw money at the counter and left.

Though he looked troubled, it seemed that this time Akihiko didn’t intend to follow him outside. Once he closed the door to Hagakure he turned his eyes to the darkening sky and asked himself if he did it right this time – if this was to be one of those conversations that left his friend pondering for days and perhaps even forget for a while, until he remembered it at an opportune moment.

He scratched the back of his neck. “…what the hell was that?”

-

There, on a spot not too far from the alley’s entrance, one of the smaller, dead end passageways was specked yellow with what remained of the tattered police tape. There was no one around it, of course, and he knew that no one had yet dared to mess with the scene, so the tatters may as well have been from either wind or poor attachment.

Shinjiro was about to make a turn towards the opposite direction when his curiosity got the better of him and he approached the crime scene with improper interest. It was a lie to say that there was nothing there when specs of crimson dotted up one of the walls, fragments of a fight with no struggle.

There was a fog like substance on the borders of his vision when his fingers pinched the bridge of his nose, wondering what was his purpose here in the first place. He ought to go home and rest, maybe revisit his planned schedule for tomorrow, because literally anything else would be time better spent.

But before he could turn back, a man walked up to him from behind, stopping beside him. “They have a name for it already: Dead Man’s Alley’.”

‘ _That’s counterproductive_ ’ he thought. ‘ _No one actually died here_.’

Officer Kurosawa straightened his shoulders, though it wasn’t as if he needed to, with his posture already as straight as it could be. It made Shinjiro unconsciously straighten out his back as well. “Were you aware of anything?”

“Of what?” Shinjiro groaned, annoyed, but not angry – Kurosawa’s voice was too charming for him to get riled up after only two sentences.

“The victim is in the hospital in critical health, but that hasn’t stopped him from rambling through his own memories. His recollection of events are…interesting.”

Shinjiro shrugged. “So the guy’s crazy.”

Kurosawa gave him a once over. “His mind is adjusting, working to make sense of what happened. Though he’s sure there was a gun, it’s the rest of the narrative that keeps changing.” A radio transceiver beeped on his belt but he paid it no mind. “He keeps repeating the word ‘revenge’, over, and over, and over again, as if he’s trying to convince himself that it’s important.”

…the revenge website? He heard rumors about it. “What’s it to me?”

“The evidence doesn’t add up. The scene doesn’t make sense. Something is missing, a key detail.” He turned his head towards him again. “Were you aware of anything?” He repeated.

Shinjiro’s fists were tight enough that he could feel the lack of blood circulation turn them numb. “No.”

After a moment, Officer Kurosawa nodded, finally picked up his radio transceiver and distanced himself – but after a quick exchange with the officer on the other side of the comm he returned with a proposition. “Aragaki, I’d like you to accompany me to the Police Station.”

Shinji snapped his head towards him. There was…there was a lot, he could’ve been called in for.

Amused, Kurosawa raised an eyebrow and explained himself better. “I would prefer to have you equipped with a worthwhile weapon, so you can defend yourself. Even if I’m wrong and the Dark Hour isn’t involved, I’d sleep better knowing that all of you kids are well-armed.” Before Shinji could interrupt him the man shook his head. “I’m aware you are no longer involved with the others. I don’t know the reason and you don’t need to explain yourself. I’ll be brief and I’ll give it to you free of charge – there’s a Heavy Axe that’s been waiting in storage for a while now and I’d rather you have it in your hands.”

He thought of rebutting his offer, not in the mood to owe people any favors, but the more he thought about it, the less sure he was of himself.

Though he’d been warned by the officers patrolling the alleys that he would’ve been better off spending his evenings inside his home for at least a few days, Shinjiro had been placid on the matter. The constant warnings only served to rile him up further, tempting him to do the opposite, and he’d been _so sure_ that it was the same for a lot of other residents at Tatsumi Port Island.

At the same time, both Kyun’s shaky form and Aki’s concerned tinged voice patterned his soul with unease. Even Akihiko, who knew of the dangers of simply living in Iwatodai, had planned on dragging him back with hurtful words as a last ditch effort. He’d failed at it miserably, but he’d tried all the same.

‘ _Am I wrong?_ _Why is everyone so fidgety about this?’_ He genuinely had no idea.

He nodded and followed Kurosawa towards Paulownia Mall.

The slow creep of nighttime threw him for a loop with how shapeless the sky was. The New Moon, a big nothingness in the sky, was the universe’s latest attempt at tearing his guard down, mollifying his taunt muscles by tricking him into false securities, if only because, at the inevitable arrival of the Dark Hour, its sickly tones of green and yellow would be easier on the eyes. It’d be a welcome change of pace, even if the shadows ended up better concealed as a result.

He yawned. With Castor asleep most of the time the Dark Hour became easier to avoid altogether. Shinjiro had found a successful formula in dividing his intake of suppressants to one at every half a day (sometimes more, if he really needed to sleep). Castor became a faint hum in his head where before he’d finds cracks to slip out from and haunt him for the rest of the day. Granted, it was still a hum that occasionally eloquently spoke back, but it was better than the constant growls and tantrums that made his bones rattle with pressure.

As a side effect of his increased dosage, reality sometimes gained a fog like screen. On those times, when he moved, it was as if he was doing so in slow motion, as if in a dream like state where he almost had to manually instruct his legs to move just so he could walk. But the trade-off was well worth it. Possibly. Though Shinjiro promised himself that he wouldn’t let the suppressants corner him the same as they did last October, he often thought, a bit stupidly, that if he kept increasing doses every time Castor learned to ignore the drug’s effects he’d eventually have to try to manually instruct his body through every motion of the day, if he ever got to wake up at all.

As if on cue, not ten steps away from Paulownia Mall’s entrance, the beginning of something sharp pierced Shinjiro’s airway. Officer Kurosawa stopped right before the revolving doors, waiting for him, and the fog didn’t allow Shinjiro to see much beyond a tunnel vision to the man’s habitual stern look. “I’m fine. I’ll be right with you.”

Shinjiro had barely a clue on how Kurosawa operated his life outside of selling questionably obtained weaponry and at this point he was a twinge too shy to ask. Besides Kotone’s frankly electrifying ascent to SEES’ leader position, the next best thing to happen in their lives was definitely Kurosawa’s predisposition to turn a blind eye to most of their theatrics in favor of lending them material aid.

As a testament to that statement, the man merely sighed, shook his head and walked inside. If Kurosawa wasn’t known to openly (and secretly, because Kirijo did do a background check on the guy) be a man of a respectable moral code, his detachedness would be a tad alarming.

A few seconds by himself was all it took before Shinjiro felt the air he inhaled puncture his ribcage. It was as if he was breathing in needles, a stinging spark ricocheting inside his lungs from which air escaped from. He tried to contain the cough that burst out of his mouth but that only seemed to strengthen how breathless he became. Though the rest of his body remained strong it were his lungs that fought against him, making him double over in pain and grab his mouth with his hand. Unable to contain it any longer, he let out a flurry of coughs and wheezes.

Instinctively he reached out for Castor but Castor was morose and not at all in tune with any of Shinjiro’s needs. And it wasn’t as if he’d ever been, really, but for a moment it had felt as if his entire trachea was at a risk of bursting out of his mouth and Castor had always been the most useful when squeezing his neck shut.

Finally, after a minute or so, Shinjiro stopped wheezing. He had his hands on his knees, bent and sweating the panic away in waves of decreasing strength as he greedily gulped down all the air he could in one go. A minute or so passed before he straightened up, head held high and a straight face replacing his desperate one. He cleaned the sweat off of his forehead and walked through the revolving doors, already thinking of what sort of bullshit to excuse himself with before remembering that Officer Kurosawa was a man of no questions attached and he thanked the universe for at least gifting him this one grace in life. Slim pickings, but he took what he could.

His straight face didn’t last for long. Upon entering the Mall he did a double take at the two figures that hung out near the entrance: the unmistakable Kotone Shiomi, in the middle of a conversation with a man at least twice her age. She noticed him walk by, a smile growing on her lips, but then the man she was talking to said something that made her snap her attention away.

Shinjiro avoided openly staring at them until he reached the Police Station, though once there he couldn’t help but eye the scene from beyond the tinted windows. There was no one else inside the common area of the Mall besides one of The Lost loitering about in a far corner, with places like Chagall Café and Game Panic severely lacking in clientele.

“That’s President Tanaka.” Officer Kurosawa supplied, having walked in from the storage room on the other side of the counter and following Shinjiro’s line of sight with his own.

Shinjiro gave him a look; as if he was supposed to know who that was.

Kurosawa chuckled. “He has a show every Sunday morning called ‘Tanaka’s Amazing Commodities’ where he advertises his products. It works on telesales.” He laid down a hefty looking weapon fully wrapped in a grey cloth over the table. “Perhaps you ought to look into it. You may find something useful.”

Shinjiro refrained from commenting on either his lack of a television set or a phone of any kind and returned his eyes to Kotone. At that precise moment Tanaka raised a hand to her chin and turned her head from side to side. “He’s very handsy.”

Kurosawa joined Shinjiro near the Station’s window, hands in his pockets. “She can take care of herself.”

He never questioned that. She was SEES’s field leader, a tactician. She knew what she was doing.

Beside him Kurosawa’s head slightly tilted Shinjiro’s way before the smallest of smirks grazed his face. Shinjiro had to remind himself that Kurosawa was a good man with good intentions, deserving of unwavering confidence despite his secretive nature. He was practically the only adult he’d come to trust in years. But Shinjiro wasn’t blind, and he could tell when someone was hatching a scheme thirty seven moves ahead of a check-mate with just a glance. “What?” He asked.

Kurosawa shrugged and looked away, still smiling. “He’s a bit of a troublesome guy.”

That perked his interest. “How troublesome we talkin'?”

Tanaka chose that moment to brush the bangs away from Kotone’s face, irking Shinjiro even more. “Some guys in the force are making bets on the day of his capture. Personally, I don’t think that day will ever come.”

Standing on the other side of the water fountain of the Mall, Tanaka took a step closer towards Kotone, blurring their figures behind the semi-translucent water.

Officer Kurosawa quickly took his hands out of his pockets and Shinjiro was already out of the door. His steps were steady and his arms swayed to accompany his strong gait, but the closer he got the more he heard of the actual exchange that he’d been oblivious up until then, and he slowed down a tad.

“If I decide to hire someone new, it’ll cost a fortune to train them.” Tanaka muttered in the end. Kotone had one arm under her elbow and the other supporting her cheek. She was only half involved in what he was saying, but when she saw Shinji standing awkwardly behind them her eyes lit up for just a moment. Tanaka, for his part, turned to check what had her so taken and then turned back to her. “Remember what I told you about promiscuity!”

Kotone looked tired. “Aw c’mon, don’t start.”

‘ _The hell?_ ’ His eyebrows pulled down together “Hey.”

Tanaka turned to him once more, ready to hear him out, but something made him falter in his response and he quickly excused himself out of the conversation. Comically, though still with a straight back, he marched out of the entrance doors. The whole interaction lasted less than a minute and yet Shinjiro had never been so confused – that was, until Officer Kurosawa stepped up from behind him and suddenly things made a bit more sense.

“Shiomi.” He called. “What business do you hold with mister ‘Executive Producer Tanaka’?”

“He’s not that bad, Officer.” She answered.

“There are a lot of people who would disagree with you.” Kurosawa sighed. “What were you discussing, in any case? Seemed awfully suspicious from afar – got your friend here pretty riled up.”

“H-Hey!”

Perhaps she wasn’t paying attention, or perhaps she didn’t care much for the tease, because Kotone’s head was mostly on some other cloud. “About, ehm…” She glanced at the revolving doors of the Mall with a knot between her brows. “…going barefoot to P.E. class.”

He wondered if Kurosawa understood what she meant, because he sure as shit didn’t, but the man merely nodded before changing the subject. “Here, Aragaki. You forgot this.” He called before handing him the weapon, still hidden behind a cloth.

Shinjiro took the weapon by the handle with practically zero effort and swung it over his shoulder, letting it rest there. Kotone fixed the movement with her eyes, something mirthful sticking to her gaze. “Whoa, senpai!”

He was unsure at what she was impressed by, if either the weapon itself or his ease with it, but still he couldn’t help the smirk that crawled to his lips, almost immediately replaced with a sneer. “Don’t call me that.”

She rolled her eyes. “Ready to re-join the team?”

“Over my dead body.” She laughed at that.

Having almost forgotten his presence, Shinji’s skin jumped when Kurosawa spoke: “You can accompany each other to the Station. Good. I have some business to attend to.” Kurosawa had his eyes on the Apathy Syndrome victim he saw before, but soon his sight returned to Kotone before falling on Shinji once more, enraptured by something Shinjiro couldn’t see (and he’d glanced behind just to be sure). If Shinjiro didn’t know any better, he would have assumed that Kurosawa was amused with him, but then the man straightened his back and cleared his throat. “I’ll place an order for more of your equipment, in case you need it.”

Shinjiro huffed and stuffed his free hand inside his coat’s pocket. “I don’t need it.” He told Kurosawa’s retreating back, but the man merely waved behind him, deciding the end of their little chat.

“Weird.” Kotone remarked. “He kind of reminds me of you.”

He balked, turning to walk the opposite way. “Which part?”

She hurried to his side. Realizing his weapon was by his left shoulder, Kotone changed positions to walk by his right side. He looked at her and she smiled. “Maybe it’s the voice.”

“Eh” He wished. Kurosawa’s voice was butter to his ears.

The outside air greeted him again, cold and salty. Not wanting to test fate more than he’d already done in life, he awkwardly coughed once into his hand and, after reassuring himself that he was safe from awkward coughing fits, let the matter be.

To his left, one lone taxi rolled through the silence and that was it. For the most part, the only ambient noise was the one made by the crashing waves resonating in the far distance.

Obscured by a night of a new moon, the sky was only illuminated by specs of stars that decorated the veil of blackness beyond, like shiny dust particles. Kotone had noticed it too. “It’s pretty.”

Shinjiro looked at her. He noticed how she sometimes skipped to match his long strides so he accommodated her gait with shorter steps of his own, adjusting their pace as he did so.

She smiled. He didn’t care.

Once they turned the first corner, she flicked her fingers against the clothed weapon, as if expecting it to clang. “Big weapon for a big guy.”

“It’s an axe.” He adjusted it on his shoulders, a bit uncomfortable with the attention, and then glared at her. “There’s an insult somewhere in there.”

“No insults senpai, just stating the obvious.”

There was a dirty joke in between the lines, too crass for even him to word it out. “What about you?”

“My big weapon?”

“Stop that.”

She snorted at his serious face before winking. “Ah, you’re no fun. It’s a naginata.”

He chuckled. “A modern onna-musha.” (**) She gave him this look in response, as if he’d just said something incredulous. “What?”

“I never thought you’d be that well versed in history.”

There was _definitely_ an insult in there. “Oh yeah?”

She shrugged. “Didn’t seem like your type of thing.”

There was a lot one could hardly surmise from a person after the minimal amount of times they’ve interacted but, then again, who was he to argue about first impressions – he knew how he looked. “What can I say? My history teacher at Gekkou loved his samurai lore. His name was Ono or something.” She tilted her head, mouth slightly ajar. It made him uncomfortable. “ _What_?”

“You” she pointed “were a star student?”

He scoffed. “What makes you think that?”

“Am I wrong? No one remembers Mr. Ono’s ramblings!” The statement sounded wrong, because he couldn’t have been the only one paying attention. It always was and probably would always be difficult to feign disinterest in front of someone so clearly impassioned.

His memory returned to years prior, to the undistinguished grades he used to get by barely trying in contrast to the way Mitsuru would scold him on the grounds of ‘ _if only you just cared enough_ ’. He rubbed the back of his neck. He used to be way more invested in skipping class rather than attending it, as noted by the amount of lectures he missed in favor of sleeping on the school’s roof. “Guess I have a good memory.” He admitted, but at her persisting, curious eyes he gave up all pretenses and elaborated further. “Fine, I wasn’t half bad. Got a scholarship out of my wits – how else would I have gotten into that fancy ass place? But I’m no genius” he was quick to add “Just did the bare minimum to stay there.”

“Why did you enroll at Gekkoukan High if you had no interest? Because of Akihiko-senpai?”

He didn’t answer.

Kotone kicked a random pebble on her way and watched it roll. “Me too. The scholarship, I mean. Got it from a recommendation letter. I was never good enough at just one thing to have people notice.”

In a way he doubted that. She was SEES’ field leader after all, and in Aki’s own words she’d been the reason why a group of teens had ‘ _covered more ground than the entire Kirijo group did in ten years_ ’. Still, he watched her as she kicked the same pebble again, watched her watch it roll onto the middle of the road, her eyes denoting absent interest. Before thinking about it further, he asked “Why’d _you_ want to enroll at Gekkoukan?” and then quickly answered himself that, of course, most probably for its name and associated prestige.

It was surprising then that she shrugged at the question. “It sort of happened. I’d been fine with any other highschool, since I just wanted to return to Iwatodai.”

‘ _Return?_ ’ He thought. He formed a question in his mouth but shook his head before giving it a voice. He shouldn’t probe for answers when he wasn’t invested enough to care. “Sucks for you.” He said instead. “That place is terrible.”

She laughed. “It’s not _that_ bad.”

“There’s a literal hell coming out of it at night.”

“Details.” She shook her hand but her face was noticeably brighter. “No hockey team though. That’s a miss on my book.”

He chuckled, already another question pending on his lips, but then something dawned on him. “You can’t be serious.”

Her smile was devious. “Yup! You’ve found it senpai, the ultra-secret reason for my choice of weapon!”

“That can’t be right.” He was appalled. “It doesn’t sound right.”

“It is. Just don’t think too hard about it.”

“A naginata isn’t a _hockey stick_.”

“Sure it is.” She laughed, but he sure as shit wasn’t laughing. Having fun at his dramatics, Kotone responded with a “Honestly senpai, do you need a reason to swing your axe?”

Beyond him being a big guy with a big, strong swing? No, he guessed there never really was much thought put into it. Akihiko had his boxing, Mitsuru had her fencing and he, well, he was an unstoppable force upon this earth. “I guess you’re right. It’s big and it hits hard. There wasn’t a need for more of a reason at SEES.”

She wiggled her eyebrows. “What a curious description.”

There was a faint throbbing on his forehead growing stronger by the minute. What was up with her today? Her approach had a different quality from the one of a mere few days back. “Don’t act cute with me, I heard that man warn you about your promiscuous ways.”

She gasped. “You heard that?”

“I was right _there_.”

In a flash her hands were on her cheeks, the white of her uniform sleeves contrasting with the redness of her face. “He was joking!”

It wasn’t as if he cared. Why was she so flustered? “Why were you talking to him anyway?”

“Stocks or something. Business-talk. I don’t know – it doesn’t really matter, does it?” She huffed, eager to change topics.

“And going barefoot to P.E. class?”

She groaned. “Don’t tell anyone that. He might get cross with me.”

His thoughts veered to how Officer Kurosawa had described the man, about how his colleagues were so sure of Tanaka's arrest that the only compelling discussion revolved around bets for the inevitable day. “You shouldn’t get involved with guys like that.” Yes, he was aware of the irony of that statement.

“There’s hope for guys like him.” She laughed. “He’s honestly not that bad, just a bit too self-centered. All he needs is a push in the right direction.”

He hummed, recalling the last conversation they had about TV static and channels that held choices under visions of a probable future. “You can’t change people.”

“Mhmm…” The sea breeze picked up ever so subtly, swaying the bangs on her face. Her eyes, though on him, seemed distant. “It’s not my intention.”

He was reminded of TV channels that were metaphors, representing the choices of a girl that could probably shape future events to her liking if the signal was clear enough.

Her smile felt the same as if she was reading his thoughts. “I’m mostly going along with what Mr. Tanaka says. He seemed to want someone to talk to and I just happened to be there to listen. If he ever has a change of heart, I doubt I’ll be the cause.” A lonely car rolled down the street and after it passed, she continued talking. “I don’t want to change people, I just want to cheer them on. Think about it: when you force someone to change, they’ll eventually realize that their feelings are fake and then…Well, I’d imagine no one would want to be around me anymore.”

“What about the ones you don’t care for” he asked, “The ones you don’t care whether they’re around or not?”

She shook her head. “I care for everyone.”

He let out a dry, bitter laugh. Kotone the virtuous saint, righteously born to love the world despite its sins. What a sanctimonious little garble of words. “You realize how insincere that sounds?”

“But I have to. Why else would I go into Tartarus, fighting Shadows and rescuing lost souls?” Her tone was spiced with a hint of exasperation, yet another new side of her. Something inside of him grinned at the idea, eager at pulling out the worst out of people who held themselves too high, or maybe just eager to carry over the fight that had failed to go through at Hagakure Ramen.

“You joined SEES to fight, not to be indoctrinated into sainthood.” He bitterly spat. It didn’t help that he knew the reason behind Tartarus’ creation and the ugly secrets that for sure still lingered right under her nose, under the floorboards and between the walls of the dormitory that doubled as a base for troubled teenagers who shot their heads with fake guns.

“Is that why you left? So no one could tell you how to feel?”

He let the Heavy Axe swing downwards to the ground, moving his upper torso to better curve the thing into position before halting it an inch over the pavement. His upper arm ached at the motion, unused to it after more than a year of not holding a weapon, but his calloused hands were firm in their grip, even if they itched in that ever so familiar way. He smirked, though not because it was funny. “Barely a flinch, huh.”

“Though guy with a tough act. _That’s_ why you chose a big weapon.” She was provoking him. Her hands were on her hips and her torso leaned slightly forward, with her head turned up to meet his. Something about the whole package burned away a flake of his composure. “Let me guess, you don’t hit girls?”

He clicked his tongue. “I don’t hit anyone I care for.” He swung the weapon upwards again, hoisting it on his shoulder and resuming his walk. “Ask me again why I left and I won’t feel as gracious.”

The night was dark and quiet. Too quiet. He turned around to look for his impromptu companion and saw her not five steps away with a dumbstruck look on her face. “You care for me?”

He scoffed, replaying the moment in his mind. Did he? He thought he’d just threatened her, or didn’t he? It was getting increasingly hard to tell and his judgement was foggy enough with suppressants as it was. “Come on o’ esteemed field leader of SEES, we haven’t got all night. There are some wicked, trigger happy fellows around town plotting to take little girls from their families.”

It took a moment for her to return to his side, but their paces adjusted to each other nicely again as their steps turned rhythmic on the sidewalk. She was itching to talk, he could tell, but before he could get a chance to rile her up into speaking she blurted it out in one go: “Just because I care doesn’t mean I don’t want to punch the highlights out of people too.” Then, she pulled him in with a finishing line so earnest that he found it difficult to be embarrassed by: “You’re the same. That’s why Akihiko-senpai comes home with a busted lip sometimes, even though he’s the best fighter I’ve ever known.”

He readjusted the weapon, shifting it to his right shoulder. “Then you don’t know much.”

She ignored him. “That’s why you came to save us at the alleys. That’s why you told us about Fuuka.”

“Do you ever shut up?”

“Never.” She smirked. “You’re kind, senpai, and there’s nothing wrong with it.”

Despite having eaten quite some time ago, there was an uncomfortable pain at the bottom of his guts. “You’re acting weird today. Like an impulsive little gremlin.”

Kotone opened her mouth to speak, but shut it again. Once the silence became too awkward he peeked to see what had her so quiet and found her deep in thought, fingers lightly massaging her temple. He would’ve asked if she was feeling alright, but not a few beats later she turned to him again, her smile now soft instead of taunting. She said nothing more and so he found no reason to goad her into a conversation again.

The sounds of crashing waves proved to not be the only thing echoing in the streets when, beyond the corner, the faint tunes of a song descended from an apartment to their right. It was a light, catchy song he only had knowledge of from his visits to the store or from Kyun’s lighthearted hums when she last wiped the Mahjong Bar’s counter.

Turning the corner he glanced up and identified the silhouette of at least four people on one of the building’s balconies, up on the fifth or sixth floor, making the most out of a pleasant evening by enjoying their dinner outside. Upon walking closer he could hear them laughing too. Happy. Unfamiliar.

Out of habit he turned his gaze to the person beside him. When he was still a part of SEES and regularly accompanied Akihiko on his nightly patrols, he’d taken notice of how Aki often stared at similar glimpses of a homely life from afar, with a sense of something that he could only qualify as longing. Shinjiro never understood the necessity of a house complete with cutouts of a nuclear family found mostly in magazines, not when his happy reality had only ever consisted of a rambunctious household full of screaming kids and demanding adults, none of them related by blood.

Well, not all of them were unrelated by blood. And really, the fact that Akihiko and Miki had failed to be adopted for the simple reason that they’d refused to be kept apart was a testament to the fact that idealized families, like the ones on magazines, were fabrications made only to sell deceits. Akihiko was his family. Traditional family structures who held dinners at their balconies under the sway of pop music meant nothing to him.

Similar to Aki, Kotone had her head turned upwards to the balcony, though he couldn’t see if the same look still applied since she wasn’t facing his way. He forgot how long he stared at her, studying her, because it seemed like an eternity had passed before she looked away. She hummed the song for a while, until the music slowly faded in the background and the waves returned to being the only source of sound. She’d hummed the same way she looked, downcast and tired, a different version of Kyun’s own take on the tune, like the B side of the same single.

She noticed he was staring and let a smile change her expression again. “What?”

He stared for a moment longer before shrugging, shifting the Heavy Axe yet again to the other shoulder, so it no longer stood between them. “First time we talk that you’re not sick.”

“Yup! Been sleeping alright.” She stretched her arms above her head before letting them fall behind her back. “You look better than last time too.”

He groaned, not in the mood to go back to that day.

Their walk towards Port Island’s Station eventually reached an end at the sight of the taxis that per usual lined the road parallel to it. Though the train hadn’t come around yet, it shouldn’t be much longer until it did, if the clock by the Station’s entrance was anything to go by. He searched the pockets of his coat for his watch and grumbled something akin to a Frankenstein’s monster of cusses when he didn’t feel it anywhere, before remembering that, ah, he probably left it in his room. Even if only then having noticed its absence, the fact that the watch wasn’t in its usual place left him chagrined.

Through his actions Kotone must have misinterpreted something. “You can go now, I’ll be fine. Thanks for accompanying me.” She lightly bowed.

“I can wait for a few minutes.” He remembered Dead Man’s Alley, not too far from where they stood. “You’re not scared?”

It was as if a comically large question mark popped above her head. “Scared of what?”

‘ _Of dying_ ’ he found himself thinking. “I guess it’s hard to be afraid of dying when you already know the date.”

A lightbulb went off in her head. “Ah, you’re talking about the murder from a couple of days ago.” She pondered. “I’ve never given it much thought, but I guess you’re right. What about you? Are you scared?”

“Of dying?”

She giggled. “Of dying.”

He shrugged. “It’ll happen when it’ll happen.”

“I used to feel the same way.” They stopped walking once they reached the turnstiles inside the Station. “I only crossed that date on my calendar a couple of months back, but before then I think I used to feel the same way. I’m not so sure anymore.” He raised a brow at that and she gave him a sympathetic look. “Knowing when I’m about to die, it makes me want to live to the fullest. I guess this is what makes me pull the trigger on the evoker every time.”

Her words struck a chord with him. He looked down at his free hand for a moment, remembering what it felt like to hold an evoker. Inside his soul, Castor looked at its own hand while somewhere else, in his memories, a Shinjiro of two years prior was hurting to reach past the curtains of melancholy, not having realized that he had always known what was beyond:

Castor was him and he was Castor, and Castor wanted him dead because Shinjiro didn’t care to either. Living or dying, it was all the same.

He turned to Kotone and was surprised to find her curiously staring back. Shinjiro remembered something else then, from his school days, though he couldn’t quite put a finger on who had taught it to him in the first place: “Memento mori?”

Her smile was gentle. “Carpe diem.”

His eyes turned forward, even if there was nothing to stare at beyond the dirty, white tiled walls a couple of feet away. “Right.” The act of wording it out didn’t mean that he was close to any sort of enlightenment. In his heart, he’d known this to be the truth all along and acknowledging it wouldn’t change a thing. He was still in purgatory, his soul still wandered, and there would probably never be a moment where he’d feel differently. Despite this, the tiled walls of the Station now held a bit more detail, as if the fog had been lifted ever so slightly.

A lot crossed his head in one moment, a tide of faces and events that he’d rather not allow his emotions clear enough for him to distinctly trace them apart. He semi-closed his eyes and let the callous on his fingers uncomfortably scratch an invisible itch on his forehead. They felt like sandpaper and irritated his flesh. The motion helped sway a rising headache but barely dented the distressing lump in his throat that was becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. Forcing his eyelids shut, he wished for the fog to come back.

Kotone nudged him with her elbow, waking him up from his daydream. “Don’t make me head-butt you again.” Her cheeks were puffed. “You didn’t listen to a word I said, did you?”

Maybe because he was a mess of foggy clouds and morose thought processes, his lips curved up without him meaning them to. It must have been a weird sight, because Kotone averted her eyes to his chest as her hand rose to scratch the tip of her nose.

In a weird way, she reminded him of how Aki used to act when faced with something that left him clueless. It was the Akihiko of the past, mostly, that used to keep nervous habits revolving around constant interactions with his face: scratching his nose, his cheek, his hairline, the bandage over his scar… Kotone worried the skin on the tip of her nose much the same way Aki used to, though that was a habit Akihiko had foregone ever since he made boxing his passion, exchanging the admittedly cute trait with knuckle cracking and shuffling his feet in place, as if he didn’t know how to properly set his body to react when not in a physical type of struggle.

Damn, he was _soft_.

Embarrassed, he lifted his hand and ruffled her hair. “What were you saying?”

Kotone let the quietude linger for a second too long, making him reel back his hand only to realize that she still had her cheeks puffed out. “You’re treating me like a kid.” On her face was a rosy frown. Her shyness was showing as she deliberated over whether to repeat herself or not. “I asked if you were free tomorrow afternoon, so we could meet at the strip mall. I-” She combed her messy hair out of its tousled state. “I want to talk to you some more.”

The sound of the shuttle train closing the distance made them both stare ahead. He thought about her offer, but remembered he had other plans. “Maybe some other time.”

The humiliating truth was that he’d planned on tuning in to a cooking show that was set to air around the same time and for that he had to go out of his way to sit his ass down on a public space with a TV that broadcasted it in the first place.

(He had it all planned out: the café where he’d go see it, the exact time he’d go see it – not too late, not too early – the exact table he'd sit at and the exact thing he'd order while he waited, with a newspaper in front of him so as to not look out of place.)

Castor was groaning at the mere thought of the ordeal – it was tough having a prideful persona when your tastes were so seemingly out of character.

He’d never admit to going this far. It would follow him to the grave.

“Don’t look at me like that.” He reacted towards a quiet Kotone, way too defensive to have sounded normal – but he wasn’t to blame, not when in front of him stood a person that claimed to be able to comprehend the context behind the screen of what was visible.

For her part, Kotone just smiled, which made him even more anxious. “It’s ok!” She nodded, sounding a bit dejected. “Some other time, then.”

The train was now loud enough that she found it opportune to leave. He watched her go through the turnstile, beeping her card on it, before he turned around to go home. The lonely walk to his apartment was accompanied by Castor’s grumbling nonsense as it mulled over something or other, his feet almost tricking him twice with wrong paths until he finally reached the front door of the building.

Ready to open the front door, with the correct key already poised over the keyhole, Shinjiro stopped and glanced back at Dead Man’s Alley. With as much thought as he could put into it, he stepped away from the door and onto another, different alley: this one larger than the previously mentioned one, wider than most others in the area, enough for a car to fit through.

Largely used as a route for the local businesses to have their goods delivered, the unnamed alley had newer looking walls, even if now covered in enough grime to be quasi-undistinguishable from the rest. On a particular spot of the wall, Shinjiro palmed its surface and let his hand linger for a while, before hiding it in his coat’s pocket and going back from where he came from.

-

6/ 23 • M, Dark Hour

Shinjiro woke up with a jolt, heart racing. The atmosphere had a dark green tint to it and there was barely any light coming from his window, whose curtains he forgot to pull before he laid down to sleep.

The extra dose of suppressants that he ingested not too long ago made his brain swim in his head, but even though his touch felt fuzzy on his own skin he was still sure that his forehead was dampened with sweat at the most recent nightmare.

Through sheer force of will he leveled his breathing by focusing on anything else – in front of him, a splotch of blood was thinning out towards its ends as it dripped down his wall, ending in a single line that ran to the floor and barely pooled bellow.

His stomach growled and the reddish color of the blood turned to resemble more of a giant tomato blotch. The more he stared the less he saw it as blood at all, coming to resemble more and more the memory of that ripe tomato that he had let splatter on the ground. The one he let fall after seeing that picture of Kotone in her gym clothes.

Seconds ticked by as his brain readjusted to his surroundings. He blinked, surprised at his own train of thought, and the more he focused on that, the less he remembered of his nightmare – alas, the more he realized something _else_.

At the train station, mere hours ago, under timid scratches of her nose and shy questions- “Was she-” He palmed stray strands of hair away from his eyes. “ _Was she asking me out_?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (*) The irony being that they’re all pretty compatible in some way.  
> (**) Onna-musha are female warriors of Japanese history, whose associated weapon is often the naginata. I’m not well versed on the matter, so if you notice anything wrong with my mention please let me know!
> 
> The next chapter’s going to be a bit spicy ~


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